Ceasefire
by bravevulnerability
Summary: 'The blood has consumed the white of her shirt, drenched the fabric of her jacket, left her skin dull and papery, but he fell in love with a fighter, a warrior of a woman, and she can't give up now. He won't let her.' Takes an AU turn immediately after the shootout in the kitchen in 8x22, 'Crossfire'.
1. Chapter 1

His chest is on fire. An intense, excruciating kind of flame he's never felt before, radiating from the bullet embedded within his sternum. His lungs malfunction, deflated and useless, the blood seeping onto the hardwood beneath him, along with his consciousness, but no, no - his wife.

" _Kate_ ," he wheezes, his head rolling towards her. Her lashes are fluttering, black wings that kiss the paled skin of her cheeks, but her lips stretch into a smile, the knot of her fingers clutching his.

"Love," she murmurs, mouth hardly able to move, dropping the word with slurring speech, and Castle grits his teeth, uses whatever traces of the energy he may have left to inch towards her. Closer, he needs to be closer, has to- "Always."

"Yes," he rasps, but it – why does she sound like she was saying goodbye? It couldn't end like this. They had survived too much, freezers and funerals, kidnappings and burning cars on wedding days. It did not end bleeding out on a kitchen floor watching the lights go out in his wife's eyes. "Kate, Kate, please."

The blood has consumed the white of her shirt, drenched the fabric of her jacket, left her skin dull and papery, but he fell in love with a fighter, a warrior of a woman, and she can't give up now. He won't let her.

"Stay with me."

A gasp spills from her lips, the line of her brow creasing with pain, but she forces open the eyes that had previously fallen shut, clings to him with her watering gaze.

"Rick."

He needs his phone, a way to call for help, but his right side is paralyzed, his fingers flexing in spasms at his thigh. But if she was able to keep her weapon raised as a bullet pierced her chest, shoot the man they knew as Caleb Brown until he collapsed a few feet away even as another round penetrated her abdomen before finally staggering to the floor, he could damn well retrieve his phone from his pocket.

Castle bites back a cry of agony, the flame of his body roaring with protest, but he fishes the iPhone from his pocket, swipes his thumb over the screen and dials the digits without opening his eyes.

He can't lift the phone to his ear, doesn't even try, but he hears the greeting of Ryan's voice on the other line, loud and accompanied by the blare of music from the bar they'd mentioned heading to.

"Castle? Castle, is everything okay?" The cacophony of noises becomes muffled, Ryan's voice becoming louder, increasingly worried. "Castle? Are you there?"

"Send an ambulance," is all he can get out, but the message makes it to their friend, an immediate response echoing from the speaker of the phone and Castle drops the device, listens to it clatter to the floor beside him, and returns his attention to Kate.

Still with him, watching him with flickers of gold fighting to stay alight in her irises, hopeful.

"Just a little longer, Kate," he promises her, dragging his body closer, drawing their hands to the clean side of his chest, over the still beating hammer of his heart. "Please don't leave me."

"Never," she breathes out, close enough now to touch her forehead to his shoulder, peaceful. He can smell the scent of her shampoo above the stench of blood, feel the heat of her breath puffing out against his arm, the warmth of her hand embracing his.

It could be so peaceful to let go like this.

Her fingers begin to loosen within the clasp of his.

"Kate," he whispers, but the lids of his eyes are so heavy, the effort of keeping them open so great. The blackness leaking in so welcoming. "No, gotta stay…"

But Kate's hand has gone slack, the exhale of her breath slowing down, and he needs a burst of adrenaline, a spike of power to sit up, put pressure on her wounds, keep her alive, but… but he can't even manage to keep himself from drowning beside her.

* * *

When Rick wakes, it's to the beep of a heart monitor, the stench of antiseptic heavy in the air, and he knows without opening his eyes that he's in a hospital, that he's been out for a while, but something is wrong.

Concern for his wife like a fierce tug in his chest where the gunshot wound resides forces his eyes to peel back, assess the hospital room, vacant of his family, his friends, of everything except two men in black suits who stand by the door.

"Kate."

One of the men taps his finger to his ear, a device inside that Castle can't see, but it brings a knock to the closed door, a dark figure slipping inside. Fear ripples through his sternum, rattles his bones, but as the broad frame steps into the light, shows his face, Castle is no longer afraid.

But he certainly isn't comforted by the sight of his father.

"Wh-where's my - my wife?" he rasps out, his throat shredded raw, but he has to ask, has to know. She isn't dead, she can't be dead, he can still _feel_ her alive, the connection to her like a second heartbeat more important than his own. And that link to her still crackles with life.

"Richard," Hunt begins, his expression solemn, his eyes dark. "You have to listen to me. It's been three days since a man who called himself Caleb Brown shot you."

What? Three days, he - no, he doesn't care. Doesn't care about that.

"Kate," he insists, wincing through a swallow, refraining from the groan of pain as the work of his throat triggers a splinter of agony through his chest, slicing his heart open. "Want. Kate."

"Caleb Brown and his employer, Mason Wood, are both dead," Hunt continues as if his son hasn't said a word. "And while I'd like to assume that is the end of LokSat, we can't be sure. And for you to be safe, for those you love to be safe, we _have_ to be sure. Do you understand me?"

"Why - why won't you _answer me_?" Castle growls, his teeth rattling with the effort. "Where is she? Where-"

"Dead." Rick's damaged heart goes still, the agony in his chest halting for a split second, and Jackson Hunt releases a loud sigh. "Katherine Beckett never made it off the table."

"You - you're lying," Castle protests, but his heart monitor is picking up speed, beeping out a tumultuous rhythm. "Not dead - she's-"

"Son, you need to calm down," Hunt lectures, but Rick balls his fist against the words, the term of _son_. This man has never been a father to him, the woman who showed him that, who provided him with a beautiful reminder of what family truly is, his real family, isn't here.

"Kate is not-"

Castle's breath catches harshly in his throat when Hunt strides to his bedside, holds out a familiar wedding band.

"I thought you might want to keep this with you while you're in protection," Hunt murmurs, placing the ring in Rick's open hand when it unfurls.

"I'm sorry, Richard. Truly. You will have the time you need to grieve, but you will have to do it in solitude if you want to live."

That was the thing, though. If Kate was dead, what was the point?

* * *

Jim Beckett is the only one allowed to know of his survival, and because of it, Castle is allowed to retreat to her father's cabin to recover and for that, at least, he is grateful. Spending his days on the dock of the lake, his nights in Kate's childhood bedroom, where they would often stay in the times they drove up for a visit, fixed nothing, healed nothing, but to echo a choice she made so many years ago, healing in the solace of the woods in upstate New York, offered him the closest thing to peace he could attain.

Jim knew to offer him space, but his wife's father appeared every few days, gave Rick the company and understanding he needed without pushing.

"How's it feeling?" the older man asks, approaching Castle on the back porch and nodding towards his chest. It's only been a month since that final morning together, since Caleb had shot him in the chest, taken out Beckett next, only a few days short of that had he woken in the hospital to the news that his wife hadn't made it.

"Still hurts," he admits, but he's rarely fazed by the ache in his chest, the tender but angry flesh attempting to heal. His grief overcompensates for the physical pain, spreads through his body with an agony of a different kind.

The isolation from his daughter, his mother, and human contact in general isn't helping, continuing to live under the pretense of being dead. He feels hollowed out inside, gutted and empty, a ghost of a man haunting a cabin in the woods.

"I noticed we're out of groceries here," Jim comments, taking a seat beside Rick on the steps, gazing out towards the glimmer of sunlight rippling across the surface of the lake. "Think you could be up for a trip to the store?"

"Mr. Beckett," Castle sighs, earning that familiar look of silent reproach from the older man who always insisted that he call him by his first name. "I don't need anything, I just want-"

"I know what you want," Jim cuts him off with a nod, no judgment, no concern, just pure understanding. And he's glad that if only one person could know of his survival, keep him company through this hellish limbo between life and death, that it was the man who lost the love of his life in such a similar way. "But what you need is some actual food, nourishment, and… I try not to mention her for your sake, for my own, but Katie… she would kill me if she found out I let you live like this. She may not be here right now, Rick, but I need to do right by my daughter."

Shit, would the mention of her ever _not_ clog his throat, sting his eyes? Was he damned to this eternal state of emotional fragility?

"Not to mention the fact that I've grown to love you like a son and I'm not too fond of you falling down the same spiral I did when I lost Johanna."

Rick digs his elbows into his knees, stares at the ground, the blades of grass that quiver in the wind, the sounds of the forest alive all around them. He was at no risk of falling to the bottom of a bottle, not at the moment, anyway, but Jim had a point. Kate wouldn't be proud of how poorly he's managed to care for himself over the last four weeks.

But Kate isn't here.

"How did you learn to breathe again?" Castle finally asks, and it must sound crazy, maybe even a little desperate, but since he had lost her, he's lost the ability to intake oxygen without disturbing the throbbing ache in the middle of his chest where his heart should be. He's lost the ability to function.

"It takes a while," Jim confesses, surprising Rick that the man had an answer at all. "And it's never the same, the pain never exactly goes away. But eventually, you become okay with living with it as a part of you."

"I think I heard her say that to a family member of a victim once," Rick recalls, the bullet wound clenching in time with his heart, and Jim's eyes flicker, a smile attempting to bloom.

"Sounds like her. She probably put it far more eloquently than I could, though," Jim murmurs, lips still quirked, and Castle fails to fathom how the man is able to smile. "The way we handled our grief was messy, it always is, but Katie was always better about making sense of it, always knew how to put it into words."

"You seem to have gotten the hang of it," Castle tries, attempting to force a grin for the other man, but it falls flat. They always fell flat.

He may never smile again and he was oddly okay with it; he doesn't think he'll ever want to.

"I'll head to the store on my own," Jim decides with a reassuring smile, patting Rick's shoulder with practiced caution, careful not to upset the delicate state of his frame. "And Rick, I… I know this has probably been the hardest month of your life-"

Understatement.

"But it's almost over."

Castle watches Jim rise with confusion, his brow in a deep furrow over the statement. Her father often had helpful words of wisdom to offer, but that? It's almost over?

Grief had no expiration date. And for Castle, it was never ending.

* * *

Rick is on the front porch swing, swaying to the gentle breeze whispering through the trees, breathing past the cracks in his chest and hoping to ease his mind, stop it from wandering towards the images of her.

He's acquired the habit of toying with the chain usually tucked away beneath his shirt, hooking his pinky through the circle of her wedding band. He lacked his, his father claiming the hospital had removed it for a test while he was unconscious, misplaced it, and he wants to sue. The day he was allowed to exist again, he swore the first thing he would do was sue the hospital for losing his wedding ring, one of the last connections to her he'd had left.

Castle glances up at the crunch of gravel, eases the ring back beneath the collar of his button up, and releases a slow breath as Jim pulls into the driveway. The sun was steadily sinking below the trees, sparkling at him through the branches and their leaves; her father had departed to the store while it was still high in the sky.

And there is someone in the passenger seat of Jim Beckett's car.


	2. Chapter 2

This was so much worse than losing her mother. Never would she have fathomed a more excruciating pain, but losing Castle, losing… the love of her life, she can't bear it. Especially not when she was the one to cause it.

Eight years together and it had been a great run, a beautiful story, but it was never supposed to end this way. She never should have been the one to survive, not without him, without their happily ever after in tact.

She had genuinely believed that they were going to beat the odds, that they were going to make it.

Instead, she was left alone in her tragedy, her grief. It makes her time at the safe house with Rita blur and blend together, days of lying in bed without movement, crying until her chest burns so badly she passes out from the pain, the only routine she maintains. A nurse brought in from the CIA the only way any form of nourishment or healing befalls her body for those first two weeks.

"I genuinely cannot imagine what you're feeling," Rita tells her, the only familiar face she has left in this temporary life of unwanted solitude.

The woman had been the first she saw upon waking after her surgery, the induced coma that had kept her under for four days. His stepmother had been the one to tell her with sad eyes and apologies brimming on her lips that Castle hadn't made it, died on the table before any form of surgery could even be performed. She had refused to believe it, still couldn't manage to wholly convince herself that her husband was gone, something inside her chest, something bright and pure and insistent fighting to live beneath the rip of bullets through her body and the pressing darkness of her grief, urging her to believe otherwise.

But every time she lowered her gaze to the chain that has reclaimed its place around her neck, the ring that he once wore hanging from the silver to sit between her breasts, smothers that hope a little more each day.

"But you have been through far too much to give up now."

Kate had scowled at the woman for the words, for the encouragement and confidence in the healing process, as if she really believed she could move on from this. Recovering from her mother's murder had been brutal, a decade long battle that never truly became any easier until she met him. The empty space her mother left was never meant to be filled, but Castle had soothed the ragged edges, caused that wound to shrink, scar over, and now…

No, there was no moving past Richard Castle. No healing process she will ever adopt. The carved out hollow in her heart for her mother had been expanded and stretched wide, a bloodied and gaping thing that wept with each breath. There was no 'after' him; there was only existing within the aftermath of losing him.

After four weeks, the isolation begins to drive her crazy, has her restless and paranoid. They're tying up loose ends, Rita had said, the CIA adamant in ensuring LokSat's true demise before allowing her back into the world. Not that there was much to go back to. Not for her.

"We just have to make sure it's over, Kate," Rita had told her in the beginning. "We have to be sure this time."

That was fair, logically she knew, but locking her up like a prisoner with nothing but her thoughts, the memory of her husband bleeding out on the kitchen floor beside her playing on a never ending loop in her head, was a special form of torture. The first and only time her torment is eased, the first time the weight of her grief is lessened and the haze of darkness cleared, is the day her father walks through the door of the small, one story house hidden deep within the forest of Vermont.

Her composure abandons her without warning, and she can barely walk, the wound in the right side of her chest, the second just below the cage of her ribs, prohibits her from much movement at all, but Kate forces her body up from the couch where she was stationed, staggers from the sofa to meet her father in the foyer.

"Oh, Katie, shh," he whispers into her hair the second she crashes into him, holding her frail and trembling body in his embrace as she sobs, buries the sounds in the flannel of his shirt. It's been years, decades, since her father has held her while she cried without restriction, and she feels foolish, like a little girl all over again, but she just can't manage to stop. Neither can he. "I know, honey. I'm so sorry this happened. I'm so sorry."

"He's dead," Beckett chokes, clutching her father's shoulders to stay upright. "Castle - Dad, he's dead and it's all my fault. It's-"

"No, Katie," her father hushes her, but now that the floodgates have been broken, her tears are ceaseless, her sobs wracking her chest so painfully, black spots dance along the edges of her vision.

Jim Beckett carefully touches her waist as he draws back, steadies her, and Kate watches through the blur of moisture stinging her eyes as her father lifts his gaze to Rita, standing sentinel in the doorway, glaring at the woman until she relents with a nod of her head.

"What's going on?" Kate demands, dropping one of her hands from her dad's shoulder to clutch at her side.

The second gunshot wound lies just below the incision scar from her first, the canvas of her body a Jackson Pollock of scar tissue, and it throbs in time with the puckered flesh just above her right breast, the lace of fire between the two connected like constellations. She needs to sit down, she knows, but something is wrong. Something the only two people left that she can trust in this world share but aren't telling her.

The dimmed flare of hope blanketed by grief, by physical agony and scar tissue, fights to flicker in her chest, latches onto her decimated heart. A flame that won't go out. _Castle._

The feeling was Castle.

"Is it - please, is he alive? Tell me he's alive?" she gets out, dividing her gaze between the two of them.

Rita sighs and steps forward, towards the two Becketts in the living room, and Kate braces for news, good or bad. She braces for a truth she has not been told. "For the sake of the investigation, for your safety and Richard's-"

Jim goes down with her when she collapses, slowing the descent to her knees as her legs give out. Her fingers rise to her chest, scraping at her shirt until they snag in the chain, clinging to the wedding ring that had slipped from beneath the neck of her blouse.

"I just got the call from Jackson this morning," Rita explains, a rueful half smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. "The case on LokSat is closed, officially, and we are finally allowed to integrate you and Mr. Castle back into society."

Part of her craves the strength to surge to her feet, shove the woman standing only a few feet away from her into the wall, curse her for the lies, for watching her mourn, for watching her grief rip her apart, and refraining from speaking the truth even still. But Kate doesn't have the energy to stand, to dedicate any of it to Rita. She possesses only the ability to lean against her father's chest as they sit together on the floor, allow the relief to flush the despair from her system.

Castle is alive.

"Where is he?" Kate whispers, casting her eyes away from Rita to meet her dad's. She has no idea how, of all people, her father is the one to be let in on what is apparently such a severely secretive operation that she and Castle had to fake their deaths, together but apart, for it to be successful, but she's grateful it's him. Would never want it to be anyone else.

"The cabin," her dad reveals, gently squeezing her shoulder. "He's been in the same boat as you this entire time, Katie. We both were, until I received a call earlier this week, informing me that I was allowed to come retrieve my daughter from a safe house."

Jim casts another look to Rita, harsh disapproval and simmering anger illuminating his pupils like rings of barely subdued fire, ready to spread.

"I will never agree with this decision," he states in a tone Kate recognizes from his days in the courtroom. "I will never agree to something that put two people in so much pain."

Oh god, Castle. He's thought this entire time that she was dead too, and if his suffering has been anything akin to hers-

"We did what we thought would keep them alive without risk, and for that, I won't apologize," Rita answers, her blue eyes hard, unwavering, but dulled with what Kate assumes is shame. But she doesn't have the time to dwell on it, to care how Rita feels about all of this.

"I need to see Castle," she breathes, gritting her teeth through the sear of pain up her side, consuming her chest, and accepting the aid of her father's arms to return to her feet. "Dad, can we please-"

"We're going. That's why I'm here, honey," he murmurs, promises, and it's one she can actually believe.


	3. Chapter 3

Something like hope flares in his chest, foreign and unwarranted, unwelcome. Heartache, sorrow, misery – they were all emotions that crushed him, consumed him, but they were all better than the sensation of hoping for something that would never come true. Hope had become paralyzing, a traitor that he did his best to stay far away from.

"Rick," Jim calls, slipping out of the car, somehow managing to look years older than when he'd left six hours ago. "There's something here you need to see, if you feel well enough to walk over."

Castle smothers his dreadful curiosity and tests the pain level in his chest as he straightens up, steadies the swing with the plant of his feet to the wooden boards of the porch. Deeming the sharp pang echoing through his ribcage bearable, he stands from the swing with a grunt, casts his eyes to the porch steps with trepidation.

"I think this is as far as I go at the moment," Castle calls back with a sigh, shuffling to the steps, but no, just imagining how that will jostle his wound already has him wincing.

"That's okay, son. I'll bring her to you."

Castle's eyes snap up at the word, the pronoun, _her._ Jim is on the other side of the vehicle, the passenger door open, obscuring Rick's view of who may be on the other side. It could be anyone, but his scar is tugging, yanking like a hook in a fishing line caught in between his ribs, towards the _her_ Jim speaks of, and fuck it, he forces himself to stumble his way down the stairs.

He bites the inside of his cheek at the starbursts of pain through his system, blinding him for a handful of moments once he's back on even ground. Jim Beckett already has the mystery passenger extracted from the car by the time Castle has managed a couple of baby steps forward, his vision clearing and the haze of physical pain dissipating.

Just in time to see Jim Beckett assisting his daughter in the walk towards the cabin, towards him.

Castle staggers back, nearly falls hard on his ass at the sight of her, bringing his mind, his breath, his balance to a halt.

Kate Beckett. Alive.

"Castle," she croaks, her voice broken but traveling the few feet of distance between them to caress his ears.

He's dreamt of her being alive before, hallucinated during the worst of times, but never has he managed to produce her voice so clearly in any of those visions, purposeful or not, and never has her father been involved. Jim would tell him if he was going crazy, wouldn't he?

"Kate?" he gets out, her name a strangled thing in his mouth, a forbidden prayer on his tongue, and he watches her – watches his wife, resurrected from the dead – attempt to hasten her shuffle across the driveway to him, her breathing – Kate was _breathing_ – ragged, her skin glistening with effort, and Castle jerks forward until he's close enough to touch her.

"I'm going to take Katie's bag inside," Jim murmurs, patting Rick on the shoulder once more before unwinding his arm from his daughter's waste. "Either of you need anything, just call."

Castle is grateful when her father walks to the cabin without expecting an answer, because he doesn't have one to give, doesn't have words.

"You're alive," Kate breathes, her bottom lip trembling like the hand that rises between them, hesitating before her fingers dusts ever so gently along the sharpened bone of his jaw.

All it takes is the return of her touch to snap him out of it.

She's real. Kate is actually here, his wife-

He's careful with her, remembering all too clearly how Caleb had put two bullets in her body, already having noticed the way she walks with such fragility, stands with caution, but Rick hauls her forward with desperate hands and Kate willingly comes, her arms banding around his waist, fingers fisting in the fabric of his shirt hard enough to rip the material.

" _Castle_ ," she gasps, her entire body shuddering against his, but her grip fails to loosen, only managing to tighten, as if someone was going to tear her away.

But no, not again. Never again.

"This is real," he breathes, his hands roaming the quivering line of her spine, palms splaying over the brittle wings of her shoulder blades. "You're real. You - Kate-"

Her mouth rises to fit against his before his sorrow can spill free, the press of her lips his first taste of salvation, breathing life back into the hollow shell of his frame, piecing the jagged bits of his heart back together, and Rick nearly chokes on the breath caught in his recovering lungs. He had never accepted it, could never truly accept that she was gone, but he had mourned her nonetheless, had fallen victim to a form of grief that left him bloodied and raw and resigned to a lifetime of desolation and despair.

But he would do it all over again, every single horrible second, if he knew he would have her back by the end of it all.

"Kate, Kate, Kate," he chants, unable to convey anything but the syllable of her name from his jumble of thoughts, too many questions swimming through his head and the electric current of her touch making him dizzy.

Nothing makes sense, hasn't for over a month now. The only thing he can be certain of is that his wife is alive, not dead like his father had claimed, not the victim of the bullet she had always assumed would be her demise, and kissing him like she's spent the last month drowning, stuck beneath the surface in a sea of darkness, just like him.

Her kiss is like emerging for air, the urgent desire in her lips infusing him with light, the heat of her mouth like deliverance and the warmth of her body sealed to his eliciting a revival, a reason for his fractured heart to beat with vigor.

They both run out of oxygen, panting hard, but Kate doesn't drift away even once they part, remaining tucked in close against his body, the fists at his back gentling but refusing to let go. She had never wanted to let him go.

"Where were you?" he demands, choking on his tears, cupping her skull in his palms and twisting his fingers through her hair even as firecrackers of pain explode from the site of his gunshot wound. "Where were you? Where-"

"Rita told me you were dead," she rasps, her voice crumbling under her sobs, and Castle leans in, brushes away the tears streaking her cheeks with his lips. "She told me that you - that you never made it off the table."

Castle cradles his wife to his chest, ignores the burn from the bullet at the pressure of her sternum fitting to his, wonders if their scars are aligned.

"They lied to us both, didn't they?" he growls, but buries his face in her hair, touches his lips to the shell of her ear, her temple, the scent of her skin and the aroma of cherries, the warmth of Kate Beckett in his arms, like coming home. "Hunt showed up in my hospital room the day I woke up, told me the same thing."

A ragged sound breaches the space between them, a broken whimper that she chokes out against his cheek.

"I don't even care, I don't care what they did - I just want you," she whispers and Castle draws back, only an inch away, just enough to see her face, the concave hollows of her cheeks, the sunken in sockets of her eyes. Alive, beautiful, but so frail, so thin, and Rick traces his thumbs over the prominent bones of her face. "I never believed you were dead. I couldn't accept it, wouldn't-"

"Not for a second," he murmurs, steadying himself against her before they both collapse. "You were never dead to me, Kate."

For the first time in over four weeks, he sees his wife's smile, fragile and tentative, but true, and Castle stains his lips to her forehead, inhales the scent of oil on her skin.

"How are you?" she gets out, her fists unfurling at his back to travel between them, touch delicate fingers to the right side of his chest, hovering above the bullet wound.

The fabric of his shirt brushes the tips of her fingers when his chest expands. "I'm better now. Hardly feel it."

"Liar," she breathes, but her lips are spreading into another smile, light bleeding into her eyes and it's breathtaking, a gorgeous sight to witness after watching all traces of life leave her gaze the last time they were together.

"I'm assuming you aren't doing much better," Castle murmurs, his gaze tripping down the line of her body. The loose shirt she wears covers the entirety of her torso, but he remembers the sight of the two bullets that had pierced her jacket, two holes ripped through the material high on her abdomen and just below her collarbone.

"Better this time," she mumbles, her hand slipping from his sternum to catch his fingers when they graze along her stomach, but she isn't trying to stop him from touching, she's… she's trying to hold onto him as her knees begin to buckle. "Heart's better now."

"Jim!" he shouts, gritting his teeth through the pull of his scar in an effort to keep her crumpling body upright, stretching like a rubber band without much give, seconds away from snapping, but he won't let her fall. He will not watch her fall again. "Hold on, Kate. You're okay-"

Her fingers snag in the fabric of his shirt once more. "Might pass out."

"That's okay." He can hear Jim bounding down the steps of the porch, gravel crunching beneath his feet as he races towards them. "It's okay, I've got you."

"Rita warned me this might happen," Jim mumbles, coming up behind Kate and assisting Rick in keeping her upright with his hands hooking beneath her arms, relieving Castle of the majority of her weight. "Her recovery hasn't been going well. Hasn't been eating, taking her meds, doing any physical therapy-"

Kate grunts, her eyes fluttering, fading. "No point."

"Katie," her father reprimands softly, but he lifts his gaze to Castle. "I have a thick blanket we can use as a makeshift palette tucked beneath my arm, if you can just lay it out on the ground and then help me carry her inside-"

"I can do that," Castle nods, his chest already throbbing at the thought of it, but Kate flexes her fingers in his shirt, fighting to hold on before Jim can attempt to ease her down.

"Cas - Castle, please don't - just don't go, okay? Stay," she mumbles, her fingers going limp in his shirt, her body slumping against him while Jim grunts with the effort to regain his grip on the dead weight of his daughter.

Rick helps shift Kate into her father's hold, hastily retrieving the folded up blanket tucked beneath Jim's arm, and spreading it out atop the gravel at their feet. They lower Kate to the ground together, Castle supporting her head while her father arranges her evenly across the thick winter quilt.

"Not going anywhere, love," he promises her, combing his fingers through the oily strands of her hair until her dad is ready to lift her up.

It cracks his chest wide open, tears a muffled cry from his mouth when they hoist Kate from the ground that has her father pausing in concern, but Castle shakes his head before he can ask, works with Jim to navigate the few feet back to the porch, up those three damn wooden steps to make it to the threshold of the front door.

He helps ease her to the couch, lowering to his knees beside Kate's head once she's safely laid out atop the cushions, eventually turning to rest his back against the couch as he breathes through the pierce and throb of intense pain splicing through his chest.

"Here, son," Jim murmurs moments later, crouching beside him with a glass of water and one of Rick's pain pills. "Katie hasn't been the only one not following her prescription schedule."

"I don't want a pill," Castle argues, still having trouble regaining his breath, but taking the water with a shaking hand. "They knock me out, make me loopy, and I need to be here when she wakes up. I want to be here."

Jim sighs but doesn't argue, won't fight him on that, and places the pill on the coffee table not far from where Rick sits, starts for the kitchen, mentioning something about dinner. Castle hums his acknowledgement, but his eyes have already fallen shut, his head tilted back against the edge of the couch cushion at Kate's shoulder.

He won't sleep, he'll just… rest. He hasn't been able to rest since he was told that his wife was dead and now, he can hear the steady cadence of her breath above him, can feel the warmth radiating from her frame. Kate is alive and it's the first time he's felt something close to contentment in an entire month.


	4. Chapter 4

The mouthwatering aroma of food in the air awakens her, the familiar scent of the woods and nighttime air, the lingering hint of Castle's aftershave-

Kate jerks, her eyes flying open even as she hisses from the ripple of searing heat tearing through her torso, but when she glances to her side, he's there. His head tilted back against the couch in her father's cabin, his eyes closed and his lips parted, his body propped against the furniture, his chest rising and falling with the work of his lungs.

Breathing, alive, within reach.

Oh, it wasn't a dream. Thank god it wasn't a dream.

She shifts carefully onto her side, pursing her lips against the flares of pain that rocket through her sternum, ping ponging within the cage of her ribs, and extends her fingers to his cheek.

Castle is alive.

"Hey Katie, feeling a little better?" Kate glances up to find her father approaching the opposite side of the couch, concern bright in his eyes, but his expression at ease, understanding. Her dad has been so incredibly understanding. "I tried not to let either of you sleep too long, especially Rick, but hopefully a half hour in that position won't leave his neck too sore."

Her fingers trip down to the arch of his throat, bathed in the soft glow of light from the kitchen, illuminating the interior of the cabin as the blue of the sky disappears into darkness outside.

"How did I get inside?" she mumbles, her brow creasing as her most recent memories flood in. "The last thing I remember, Castle and I were in the driveway…"

"You passed out," Jim explains, leaning against the side of the couch with that quiet form of worry he often hides in his eyes shining brightly. "Rick and I carried you in."

"Oh no," she breathes, glancing down to her husband, her fingers tripping downwards to sweep along his chest, but her father shakes his head.

"It put a lot of strain on the wound, took a lot out of him, but I checked the scar while you two were sleeping and everything looks okay," her dad reassures her. "You're both a little worse for wear, but I think now… I think you'll both have a chance to heal without complication."

"Thank you for coming to get me, Dad," she rasps, turning her attention from her husband to her father, the two men she loved most in this world. "Thank you for being here for him."

They had discussed the past month on the drive back from Vermont, her father distracting her from the agony of sitting ramrod straight in the passenger seat, gritting her teeth through every turn, every stop and go movement the car made, by relaying all of Rick's progress to her. He had told her about the gunshot wound that matched the marred flesh near her right shoulder, how Castle had been just as dead to the world as she was, Alexis and Martha both back in the city, mourning him while he mourned her. Her father and her husband had grieved her together and it tore her heart deeper, punctured it in places she hadn't known could feel excess pain, but at least… she was so relieved to know they would have had each other if the tale of her death had been true.

In turn, Beckett had explained what little the month had entailed for her, from the day she awoke to Rita at her hospital bedside to the moment her dad had entered the safe house. The stories, she learned, were essentially the same; same forms of suffering, just different settings.

Jim offers her his best smile, her favorite smile, an affectionate quirk of his lips that spreads to his eyes.

"No thanks necessary. I love you, Katie, and Rick's family - I'd do just about anything for you two," he winks, his tone lighthearted, his smile contagious, but she knows without a doubt that her father means it. "Need help?"

"No, no, I got it," she murmurs, gingerly pushing up on her elbows, breathing past the wave of agony that sweeps through her chest to maneuver her body into a sitting position against the arm of the sofa.

"Just as stubborn as the last time," her dad sighs, but he doesn't attempt to lecture her, to assist, knowing better than that.

Being shot for a second time is no easier than the first, let alone with two bullet wounds instead of one, but this time, she knows her limits, knows just how far too push before she manages to set herself back another few weeks of healing. Though, she's certain her lack of concern over the past month at the safe house has stalled her progress indefinitely.

But she doesn't care, would gladly welcome the pain again, as long as she can have Castle.

"Rick," she whispers, her fingers glimpsing along the cool shell of his ear, the sensitive skin behind it, eliciting a flicker of movement behind his eyes. "Castle, wake up."

His fingers twitch at his sides, his lips moving with silent words, and Kate trails her touch along his temple, through the golden locks of his hair, streaked with evidence of sunlight like the freckles smattered across his skin. Castle leans into the cup of her palm at his jaw, awkward at this angle, but the fit of his cheek to her hand soothing the jagged edges of her heart.

"Castle," she calls once more, watching his lashes begin to flutter with effort. "Open your eyes for me."

The blue of his gaze spears her with its intensity, the striking shade of cerulean stealing her breath as his eyes fly open to see her.

"Kate," he rumbles, one of his hands rising from his side to cover the fingers at his jawline, his head turning to stain his lips to the heel of her palm out of habit, relief. "Still here."

She isn't sure if he's referring to her or himself, but did it really matter?

"Yeah, still here, Castle," she breathes, spreading her fingers like wings at his jaw, the tips of her digits grazing the reassuring jump of his pulse. "Want to shuffle over to the table with me for dinner?"

"I do, but I don't know if I can get up," he breathes, his lips still curled in an awed smile despite the words, and Kate laughs at him for it, guides her fingers upwards to stroke through his hair.

"I'm sorry I fainted on you," she murmurs, scratching gently at his scalp, watching his eyes fall closed. "That you and Dad had to carry me in."

"Happy to," he hums, taking a deep, staggering breath before opening his eyes again, staring at her for a long moment. "I love you, Kate."

She feels so fragile, so breakable in every way possible, and even as his love restores all of her shattered pieces, fits them back into place, it devastates her all the same.

Kate eases her legs over the edge of the couch, waits patiently for Castle to maneuver his legs beneath him, use the strength of his lower body to carefully hoist himself upwards. She does the same, pausing with him in front of the sofa, both of them panting hard from the simple task, and Kate still can't lift her arms upwards, but she can wrap them around Castle's waist, tuck her head beneath his chin and touch her lips to the hollow of his throat.

"I love you too," she whispers, gritting her teeth against the burn in her throat, her eyes. It wasn't a dream, but it felt like one, the lace of his arms around her so good, too good to be true. Kate splays her fingers at the backs of his ribs, inhales a slow but deep breath, and relishes in this reclaimed reality she thought she had forever lost. "I'm so glad you're still here for me to love you, Castle."

* * *

He doesn't let go of her hand throughout dinner, his chair pressed in close to hers at the quaint kitchen table as they take their time with the meal Jim cooked for them. Nothing fancy – pasta with chicken and vegetables mixed in, one of the meals her father has made before throughout Castle's stay here – and once they're done, once Rick's managed to consume the majority of his plate and watched his wife force down a few bites of her own dinner, once Kate's eyes are half lidded and drooping again, her father suggests they both head to bed.

"I know I've been with you both through your recoveries," her dad states, walking alongside them towards Kate's old bedroom. The door is already partially opened, the duffel bag containing Kate's belongings from the confidential CIA location Jim spoke of at the foot of the bed, her prescription bottles on the nightstand, all still more than halfway filled. He assumes any toiletries she may have, any bandages and first-aid equipment from her recent stay in a safe house now resides in the adjoining bathroom. "So you both know the drill. Need anything at all, you know where to find me. You also know I'm a light sleeper, so if you need me to come to you, just yell."

Kate releases Rick's hand to embrace her dad, her arms limp and low around his torso, but her chin on his shoulder and a fierce whisper of gratitude rushing past her lips. And Castle wishes he had more than a simple 'thank you' for the man, considers buying him a new boat once the aftermath of their 'deaths' has settled and normalcy has been restored. But it still wouldn't be enough.

"Thank you, Jim. For everything," Castle offers for now, extending a hand that Jim accepts, uses to draw Rick into a careful hug. "Not a problem, son. You two try to sleep, you both need it."

Jim releases him, gives his daughter's arm a gentle squeeze, and turns to leave them in the bedroom doorway. Kate is the one to take Rick's hand, lead him into the room and click the door shut behind him.

He has questions, inquires he hadn't wanted to ask while they were having dinner, while she still looked so tired and his chest still ached harshly with every breath. But he won't be able to sleep again until he knows, until he's certain they won't be returning to take her away again.

"Where did they take you?"

"Vermont," she answers with downcast eyes, but no hesitation. She's not hesitant to tell him anything, he can sense that, but he can also sense that recounting the past month is a form of torture she doesn't look forward to enduring. "They transferred me the day I woke up even though the doctor advised against it. I had a nurse at the safe house, and your stepmom, but I… the last month is all a blur for the most part. Can you help me with this?"

Castle follows her as she descends to the bed with her lips pursed together, the surrounding skin blanching with the effort of concealing the sounds of her agony. Her fingers skim the edge of the sweatshirt and Rick hooks his fingers in the hem, slowly draws the worn fabric over her head, down her arms.

Her upper body is bare beneath, no bra or bandages, captivating him long enough for Beckett to whisper his name and duck her head, but the marred flesh of her chest, her abdomen, calls to him, along with the chain around her neck.

"My ring," he breathes, tracing his fingers along the line of the jewelry, down to where it rests above the fully healed scar between her breasts that he's worshipped with his mouth too many times to count. "He said - Hunt said it was lost-"

"Rita said the same about mine," she murmurs, her eyes burning gold with hope, and Castle fumbles to extract the chain from beneath his shirt, reveal the matching wedding band that draws a choked gasp from her throat. "Oh, you have it. Thank god you had it."

"Trade?" he gets out, a shredded chuckle attempting to work its way past his lips as he bends to unhook the clasp at her neck, allowing her to drag his chain over his head.

Kate has his ring between her fingers and his heart skips as his wife takes his hand, tugs him closer, humming in approval when Castle moves to sit beside her on the edge of the bed. She glides the ring back onto his finger with a smile flirting along the corners of her mouth, the fluttering edges of her lashes casting shadows across her face while her eyes shimmer in the golden lamplight of the room.

"Kate," he murmurs, grazing his fingers along the skin of her cheek, trailing up the slash of bone to tuck the curtain of her hair behind her ear.

"I just never thought I'd be able to give it back to you," she manages, her gaze lingering on the gleam of white gold back on his finger, her thumb smoothing over the band, and Castle catches her left hand. Careful not to stretch her arm above her chest, but lifting it high enough to hold between them, he snags her gaze as he places her wedding ring back on her fourth finger with an effortless slide. "Never pictured doing this topless either."

His chest ruptures with the breath of his laughter, his heart exalting at the glimpse of her teeth past the spill of her smile.

"Here," he chuckles, reaching for her bag, but Kate touches her fingers to his knee, stalls him.

"I - mind if I use one of yours?"

His brow quirks, but the request has soft pleasure fluttering through the tomb of his ribs, clearing away some of the leftover rot formed within past month that hadn't been swept away at the sight of her in the driveway.

"Sure," he murmurs, rising from the bed to shuffle across the room and tugging open the top drawer of the dresser. She had always favored his plaid shirts when it came to button downs, the t-shirts she would always steal too much of a challenge for now, and Castle retrieves the softest one he can find, holds it up for her approval, returning to sit beside her once he has it.

He helps work each of her arms through the sleeves, stopping every time she winces, allowing the front of the shirt to hang open after the fabric finally drapes comfortably over her shoulders.

His wife bites her lip when his hands linger along the edges, the tips of his fingers flirting with the sharp bone of her clavicle to kiss the puckered flesh just above her breast, a near exact match to his.

"Which one is worse?" he asks quietly, his other hand coasting along her naked side, sluicing down the rungs of her ribs to stop over the second wound on her abdomen. The faded scar from her first shooting, the line of discolored flesh just below the curve of her ribs, highlighted by the fresh punctuation of another bullet hole.

"That one," she sighs, the limp waves of her hair cascading over her shoulders as she lowers her gaze to the caress of his fingers. "Let me see yours."

Castle hesitates, his attention still so attuned to her, to these two new injures that have fresh waves of concern lapping through his system, his imagination running wild, picturing the visceral form of pain she must have been in. Suffering alone-

The snag of her fingers in the middle of his shirt, undoing the third button, has him instinctively reaching for the first disc, giving her what she wants, slipping buttons free until his shirt falls open to match hers.

Kate's eyes darken, murky pools of brown riveted to the mottled flesh of his sternum, her body inching closer to his on the mattress.

"I'm so sorry," she whispers, dusting her fingers to the spot, the moisture in her eyes finally spilling free, streaks racing down her cheeks, but he doesn't understand, can't comprehend why- "I'm so sorry I did this to us, Rick."

"Kate," he growls, shaking his head even though the movement always causes his scar to pull. "No." Castle winds his arms around her, breathes a sigh of relief when she doesn't resist, shifts to huddle into his embrace instead. "This was not you, Kate. Not your fault."

"I'm the one who just couldn't let it go," she gets out, her throat closing up, her words heavy and wet with tears. "I'm the one who-"

"Was trying to do the right thing. You were the one who was trying to find justice, doing one of the many things that made me fall in love with you," he husks, cradling her body as close as he can at this angle, feeling the naked skin of her chest brush against his with the trembling intake of her breath. "I would never change it, Kate. Never change you. So don't ever be sorry. Not for this."

Her lips are at his shoulder, the short puffs of her breath cooling his skin with each passing second, but he doesn't mind the silence, doesn't mind the moments of solace, tracing his fingers up and down the bowed curve of her spine. But her hand is struggling to ascend, back up to his chest, her fingers curling just a few inches from the bullet scar.

"It's still beating," he murmurs, words she doesn't need to hear, a reassurance she can feel beneath the claim of her possessive palm and coiled fingers.

"They should have told us," Beckett mutters, a quiet sniffle accompanying the bitterness laced through her words. "They had no right, no point to keep us apart."

"No, they didn't," he agrees, his fist clenching at her nape, catching in the strands of her hair. He had always carried a small portion of resentment towards his father since childhood, more so after he got to know the man, witnessed him walk out on his son a second time, but now? He despised Jackson Hunt. Was no longer too fond of his stepmother either. "He - Hunt never came here, only once in the beginning to brief your dad, and he just kept saying I had to be strong for Alexis, for my mother, as if… as if I could just move on from you, be okay without you. How can he – how can they just take you away and not even care? Not even consider what it would do-"

"Castle," she whispers, the feathering of her lips at the edge of the shoulder soothes, comforts, but the rage that had flared upon realizing what the CIA had done once he finally had Kate back in his arms again has returned with a vengeance.

"They had me damn near convinced you were dead and it's all I could see. You lying on the kitchen floor, the lights going out," he lets out, his throat closing, clogged around the words, aching, and Beckett lifts her head from the refuge of his shoulder, seeks out his gaze with her own.

Throughout the entirety of their time apart, he had done no more than shed silent tears for her, restraining the visceral side of his grief deep in the caverns of his chest, the rubble of his ribs and decimated heart. It emerges now, crawls up his larynx and threatens to drag the sobs up with it.

The moonlight from the window pours over her thin form, making her look like the ghost she had been for what felt like far too long, and the urgency to keep her there rises like a tidal wave inside him, taking him under again and again-

"Hey, Rick, look at me," she breathes, still breathing, he reminds himself. "I'm not dead. I'm right here, so are you."

"I can't do it without you," he confesses what she already knows, blinking against the well of tears in his eyes, the swell of anguish in his already damaged chest, ready to burst apart. He's had panic attacks before, few and far between, but enough to recognize the beginning of one building, knows that Kate does too. "I don't want to do this without you, can't _not_ have you, Kate. It's not worth it, not-"

"You won't, you're not," she swears, her fingers gripping at his sides, the press of her wedding band cool against his skin. "Never again, Castle. From this point on, it's together or not at all, and no one is ever going to interfere with that."

He nods, gasps for the air his lungs crave. He's okay, he has his wife back, he's _more_ than okay, but the tears are dripping down his cheeks, falling to mingle with hers, and Kate slips her palms beneath his shirt, splays her cold hands over the bare skin of his back, anchors him.

"Shh, we're okay," she promises, tilting her face upwards, their noses bumping in a familiar kiss as her forehead reclaims the resting place of his. "We're going to be okay, Castle. We're still here."

He nods, allows his body to calm, seek the peace of her so close. He had asked her dad how he was supposed to breathe only this morning, hours ago that felt like lifetimes, and he had his source of oxygen, the ragged coil of grief that had made the task so difficult now unraveled. The chapter of their story wasn't over, refused to end, and he cards his fingers through her hair, the last of his anxiety draining to puddle on the floor beside their bed, seeping into the wood.

They couldn't be over, because his life with Kate Beckett wasn't a simple chapter. She was the better half of his story.


	5. Chapter 5

Castle had stripped of his shirt after his tears had dried and the rhythm of his breathing had calmed beneath her hands. He'd buttoned hers next, changed into a pair of sweatpants, ensuring she was comfortable before he crawled back into the bed with her, inquiring about medications and vitamins, what she may need during the night that he could help with, huffing at her when she'd arched an eyebrow in reply.

Her body ached to renew every form of connection with him, to seal their skins and feel him come undone all around her, to just _have_ him, but they were both bruised and battered from their injuries, from the past month, the past few hours, and sex would have to wait.

"Not yet, but the second we can," he had murmured, his voice the low husk she remembers with striking, ember inducing clarity. She had felt cold for so long, she'd almost managed to forget what the feeling of warmth, the spark of growing heat, felt like.

"Definitely," she had sighed, resting on her back atop the full sized mattress, humming in contentment as Castle had settled in close to her, the length of his body snug along her side.

She had wanted to turn over, curl into his chest with her knee between his thighs, fit against him until every curve and contour of their bodies slid into place, but as with everything, she had been restricted to sleeping on her back. And for the most part, Castle had too, though in the night, she had woken multiple times to find him shifting towards her in his fitful slumber, waking himself up with all the movement.

Each time, his eyes had shone a mercurial blue in the darkness, flaring open to search for her at his side, the gallop of his heartbeat eventually slowing, blown pupils shrinking as she whispered the truth to him, squeezed their tangled hands over her ribcage.

"Right here, Castle," she would promise him over and over again, earning the relieved exhale of his breath, the slur of her name, dripping with so much gratitude, the lopsided smile of his lips, and the flutter of his eyes falling closed again.

Sleep never came easy to her anymore, but eventually, her eyes fall closed with exhaustion, peel back to the streaks of sunlight blanketing the quilt draped across her body, replacing the glow of the moon she had drifted to sleep with. Her muddled brain finds it strange, the comforter across her waist from the bed at her father's cabin instead of the plain black throw the nurse usually left splayed atop her figure in the tiny bedroom of the safe house.

The two weren't so different, the chirp of birds and songs of insects playing outside her window almost identical, the rustle of the trees and shadows from their leaves dappling across the bed, dancing over the bare skin of her hand. But her father had retrieved her from the safe house in Vermont, brought her to the cabin, where Castle-

Kate turns her head on the pillow, but the space beside her is empty, the sheets wrinkled, the impression of his body still visible, but he's _not here._

"Castle?" she rasps, attempting to clear her throat of residual slumber. Her dad had left a bottle of water on the bedside table, but her fingers are already numb with anxiety, untrustworthy as they begin to quiver at her sides. "Castle?"

Still no answer.

She grunts, ignores the sizzling pain zipping back and forth between the two gunshot wounds, connected by a cord of agony that stretched taut with every breath, and forces her body to inch its way up into a sitting position against the headboard. Kate assesses the room while she catches her breath, searching for signs of him, but her old bedroom hardly looks lived in, her open duffel bag on the floor the only evidence of an occupant.

He's here, he's here, he was _here_ , she tells herself, knows it's true, but she can't manage to make sense of why he would leave her to wake alone when he's already been gone for so long.

Unless… would they have taken him? Could Hunt, the CIA, _someone else,_ have kidnapped him while she was sleeping and vulnerable?

Her heart begins to accelerate, each thrash through her sternum bruising against her ribcage, beating the tired bones until they're on the verge of breaking, and Kate purses her lips, slides her body towards the edge of the bed. She's being irrational, some part of her brain screaming the logic at her, but the panic in her bloodstream is stronger, louder, and she has to find him. Has to be sure she hasn't lost him all over again.

Beckett's feet touch the floor and she knows better than to rush, but uses momentum to push herself up from the mattress, staggers into a standing position and ignores the explosion of fire in her abdomen, molten and licking its way up her ribcage, slicking the bones in lava. Gritting her teeth, she begins her journey to the door, almost there, almost there-

"Whoa, Kate," he breathes, and she releases a gasp of relief, of pain, when Castle nearly crashes into her, catching her by the elbows and sending a sharp jolt of lightning crackling through her bones. "Kate, what's wrong? What's-"

"Where did you _go_?" she gets out, her teeth clenched so fiercely her jaw throbs with the ache of it. Her eyes are screwed shut, but she feels Castle stiffen before her, his fingers tightening at her elbows. "I woke up and you were gone-"

"I'm sorry," he whispers, his arms sliding forward to wrap around her, hold her up while his knee eases between hers, supporting her when she slumps against his chest, her cheek to his shoulder, avoiding the spot where a bullet tore through his flesh. "I'm so sorry, I wasn't thinking… I wanted to make you breakfast. Like - like I was supposed to the morning we-"

The groan spills from her lips to his shoulder, absorbed by the fabric of his shirt and the skin beneath, and Castle presses his mouth to her temple, whispers another apology she doesn't want.

"It's fine," she gets out, finally forcing her eyes to open, unfurling her fists at his sides and clinging to the material of his shirt. "It's okay, I just-"

"I would have lost it if I'd woken up and you weren't there," he admits, one of his hands migrating up the ladder of her vertebrae to curl his palm at her nape while the other splays at her hip. Points of contact that steady her, slow the panic and the pain rushing through her system, and allow her lungs to expand with her first full breath of the morning. "I get it, Kate."

"I just thought someone took you," she confesses on a sigh, feeling foolish at the scent of eggs, of toast and turkey bacon she can taste in the air now that her senses have settled.

"It'd take an army," he mumbles and her lips quirk, the tension in her body dissipating, melting into his even though she shouldn't, shouldn't put so much weight on him in so many ways. "I'll let you know next time I step out."

"You don't have to-"

"I do," he murmurs, his thumb circling at the base of her skull, his fingers stroking through the baby fine hairs there. "For both our sakes, I do."

"Okay," she agrees, staining her lips to his clavicle through the fabric of his button down shirt, plaid and matching the one she wears. "At least until I'm better, can come after you."

"Only if you follow the same rules."

"Deal."

"Good. Now, come on, Beckett. My handicapped ass just spent the last hour slaving over a hot stove and the toaster for you."

Kate releases a muffled laugh into his shirt. "Missed you cooking for me."

A rumble of amusement travels through his chest, trembles through her frame, and she grins, eases back to see his face.

"It took awhile, but I made us quite the mini buffet. And your dad said he'd bring back lunch, which took some of the pressure off if I couldn't make it work," he informs her, his eyes a bright cerulean in the morning light, so much closer to the man she remembers compared to the shell of him she had been reunited with yesterday afternoon. She hopes she can resemble the person he married soon too, instead of the mangled ghost of a woman devoured and disgorged by grief for a second time.

"Where is my dad?" she inquires with curiosity, glancing past him towards the empty hallway.

"Oh, he was heading out the door when I woke up this morning, told me he'd be fishing until noon, but promised he was only a phone call and fifteen minutes away," Castle explains, both of his hands converging between the blades of her shoulders, absentmindedly cupping the rounded edges of bone. "You look beautiful, by the way."

Kate's eyes dart back to see him, expecting a tease on his lips, but his gaze on her is soft, reverent and adoring. She can't arch on her toes to kiss him like she wants to, so she touches her lips to his chin where she can reach, waits for him to lean in for her mouth.

His lips are a caress over hers, a fusion of warmth the spreads light through her insides.

"So do you," she mumbles, whispering her lips along the upturned corner of his mouth. "Now, take me to your breakfast buffet."

Castle beams like the rays of sunlight breaching the windows, illuminated by a joy that had become foreign to her, and bands a tentative arm around her waist as they start down the hallway together.

"Did you have any sort of diet going, for your recovery?" he asks, their pace towards the kitchen slow and his eyes averted. Castle is the one who craves to lay everything out, discuss every detail, but he's having as hard of a time as she is when it comes to mentioning the safe house, the secret of her existence and his own.

"Mostly just an IV drip," she murmurs, wincing at the disapproving swing of his eyes towards her, but Rick mistakes it for physical pain, gentles the arm around her and decreases from careful steps to a sluggish shuffle through the living room. "I couldn't eat, couldn't stomach anything even if I'd wanted to."

She watches his throat bob from the corner of her eye, acceptance settling in the frown lines bracketing his mouth. "And now?"

"Food is more appealing," she assures him, brushing her fingers along the knuckles curled at her hipbone. "Dad said he's kept you on a decent diet."

"It helped, having him here," her husband admits, something pained but beholden flashing through the blue of his irises. "He didn't… he didn't know either, right?"

Kate offers a small shake of her head, exhales in quiet relief when she can curl her fingers around the back of one of the kitchen chairs her dad had built when she was only a teenager. "Not until this week, according to both him and Rita. If I'd had any idea… he would have told you. I know he would have. He never would have wanted you in pain."

"He understood," Castle nods, shuffling towards the modest kitchen counter attached to the stove, retrieving two plates with a colorful assortment of the foods she had smelled, along with fresh fruit that had her mouth watering, her stomach growling. She couldn't remember the last time she had felt genuinely _hungry._ "No one could have understood better than your dad and I'm grateful to him, forever grateful he was here, helping me keep my head above water."

Something in her heart eases, the overwhelming concern for him that would thrash and thrive for months to come dulling at his talk of her father, how the two of them had bonded – an expert at mourning and a man who should have never had to learn. "Yeah, he's become pretty good at that."

"Was Rita helpful?" he inquires, optimistic despite the spark that flickers through the darkness of his pupils at the mention of his stepmother.

"She was… kind, encouraging, but it only - it made me angry," she murmurs, her brow furrowing as she sorts through the muddled emotions, dusty and stored away, her coping mechanism of compartmentalization the only way she had kept even a fraction of her sanity within the last month. "They knew, so of course it wasn't a big deal to her, but she just… she watched it break me. She offered me pretty words of comfort and promises that it would get better, and I hated her for that. For even thinking I could move past you."

Castle eases their plates onto the table, folds into his seat with bated breath and his mouth in a thin line. "Hunt came by the once, like I told you, and I'm glad that was it. Hope I never have to see him again."

"We're not like them," Kate blurts, gripping the fork he places in her hand a little too hard. "Like Hunt and Rita. Our life together… I want it to be constant, every day. No secrets or conspiracies. The way I love you - it's everything to me."

Castle lifts his eyes to the ceiling.

"Shit, Beckett, I already cried in front of you last night," he mutters, and the tight knot in her chest unfurls with the smile across her lips. She had become better about it over the years, but words were still not her specialty, often escaping her, tangling up on their way out of her mouth and coming out all wrong. But Castle always read them right, understood what she was trying to say when it mattered most, knew when to lighten the seriousness with humor or wade deeper into the conversation with her.

"We're not like them," he concurs after a moment, returning his eyes to level with hers across the table, the steam from the scrambled eggs swirling up to caress the underside of his jaw. "We… our love story is unlike anyone else's. Maybe it's luck, the universe, higher power - I don't know, don't know what to believe in aside from you, us- but everything you and I have been through… our story is far from over, Kate. And it doesn't end. Will never end."

He couldn't ensure that, couldn't make her any promises that their life together wouldn't be snatched away from them at any given moment, but that fierce sensation in her chest, light and certain and _good_ , that had kept her company, kept alive what had been only a wistful ember of hope at the time, flares strong in her sternum. Strong enough to have her believing his words to be true, that their story was too great to be dashed by tragedy, that they deserved the happily ever after they had both fought so hard for.

"No, it doesn't," she agrees, lifting one of the strawberries on her plate to her lips. "We don't."


	6. Chapter 6

"Do you have physical therapy?"

"Some," he hedges, pushing around the small remainder of eggs that have gone cold on his plate. "Mostly just the exercises. I'll… I'll get better about doing them."

"Me too," she sighs. "I was horrible about doing them the first time around, following a system, but it works. Maybe this time we could - do them together?"

Castle perks up in his seat at the idea. He wouldn't tell her how so many summers ago, he had fallen victim to secret daydreams, imaginations of being here with her throughout her recovery from that fateful day of Montgomery's funeral, working through her pain with her, eradicating some of his own with her presence. "That would definitely be more preferable."

Kate tilts her head at him in question, amusement glimmering golden in her gaze, but Castle shakes his. Maybe some other time he would share the pathetic memory, when their wounds were less raw and talk of near death didn't send a painful snake of tension slithering up his spine.

"Once you're past risk of infection, we're putting the lake to good use. Resistance training and all that," he muses instead, nudging at her plate. He's proud of her for eating the majority of what he had served, a piece of toast, the eggs, bacon, but she had a few pieces of fruit left that would probably do her good.

His wife knocks his fingers away with her fork, stabs one of the remaining purple grapes lolling along the edge of her dish. "You just want to go skinny dipping."

"I will not deny that seeing you naked again is high on my wish list," he murmurs, the grin coiling at the corners of his mouth. "Naked and wet is probably at the top-"

"Castle," she scolds, tapping her toes to the top of his foot beneath the table, a gentle form of reprimand, the only kind she can deliver at the moment.

"Don't pretend you aren't eager to have your way with me," Castle hums, preening from his seat, earning the weak toss of a blueberry in his direction.

"You have no idea," she tosses back, her voice like velvet, smooth and arousing as it sweeps through his senses.

He has an answer, oh he most definitely does, but three quick raps on the front door steal his words, jerk them both to attention instead.

"Could your dad have forgotten his key?" Castle asks, hopeful, but the effortless teasing has been wiped clean from Beckett's face, tension rushing to fill the lines of her skin, their banter extinguished from the air and replaced with the weight of apprehension.

"He never has before," she murmurs, a noise of disapproval ripping from her throat when Rick rises from his seat, turns towards the front door.

"I'll just check and-"

"No, I'm coming with you," she states, no room for argument, already using the table's edge to hoist herself up.

"Kate, it's right there and I'll-"

"I was in our fucking bedroom when Caleb shot you," she hisses, the knuckles of her hands burning white and his heart bottoms out, free falls to his stomach. "You were in the kitchen and I had no idea… I could have gotten to you sooner, taken down the man who shot you quicker, if we had been together."

"Or he could have killed us both more efficiently," Castle snaps, but his logic doesn't deter her. Kate pushes herself towards him, gasping at the pull of her injuries, and he curses, hooks his arm around her and waits until she can breathe again to move them both forward. "You're so damn stubborn, going to hurt yourself just to answer the goddamn door with me-"

"I don't care," she wheezes, gritting her teeth and gripping the back of his shirt. "I'm not letting it happen again."

Castle huffs, swallows his indignation, and starts them on the short journey to the door as the knocking starts up again, ensuring that his wife is steady and has her breath after they come to a stop with his hand on the knob.

"Okay," she mumbles, her fingers tightening at the base of his spine when he turns the lock, twists the doorknob to pull the door back.

Only to reveal Agent Jackson Hunt standing on the other side.

"Richard, and Captain Beckett, you both look better than I had been expect-"

"What the hell are you doing here?" Castle demands, clutching the sharp jut of Kate's hipbone to calm the roar of tension he can feel stirring beneath her skin, to quell his own.

"The security detail surrounding the perimeter of the cabin will be pulled today, the investigation finished, and it will likely be another few years before we meet again," Hunt informs him, light, pleasant, as if there was nothing wrong at all. "So I figured I might as well drop in, ensure that you were healing better than the last time I saw you."

Kate's hand falls from his back, forms a fist at her side.

"Rita didn't think accompanying me was a good idea," Hunt explains, his gaze shifting to Kate. "She had an assignment in Tunisia that she had to leave for anyway, but she sends her-"

A muffled cry spills from Kate's mouth in unison with the resounding slap of her hand to the flesh of his father's cheek, the rush of movement exploding between them, the contact of her palm hard and firm. And costing.

"Kate," Rick whispers her name as she gasps through grit teeth, drawing her arm back and curling it around her abdomen, but the fire in her eyes doesn't dim, her gaze lethal and trained on the man cupping his cheek, staring back at her in subtle surprise.

"She's the one you're concerned for?" Hunt questions wryly, rubbing at the stinging skin of his cheek, but Castle doesn't offer the man a second glance, his eyes on his wife's face as she pierces Hunt with a glare he's seen her use on the worst of suspects.

"Don't ever come near us again," she growls, her entire frame trembling within the support of Castle's arms, his chest at her side, hands cradling her elbows to keep her standing. And he should probably chime in, say something to accompany her statement, her warning, but he's still rather shocked from the sight of his wife smacking his father.

She truly was a force to be reckoned with, fierce and feral and ready to fight for what she stood for, who she loved. His father was no match.

"Still quite the spitfire," Hunt mumbles, drawing his hand down from the vibrant red flare of his cheek. "And I can understand why you're upset-"

" _Upset_?" Kate repeats. "You - you told him I was dead. Had your wife do the same to me. You two were playing God, watching us suffer, letting us think-"

"You're too emotional to understand," Hunt argues, his dark eyes sparking with indignation. "I was doing what was best for my son, for you as well-"

"No," Castle snaps, finding his voice and standing taller at his wife's back. "You weren't. She's best with me. I'm best with her. And you had no right to make the decision to separate us, to lie no matter the circumstances."

Hunt shakes his head, his gaze flickering between the two of them with something like pity in his eyes. "Keeping you both separated, dead to everyone except one select person who could keep your existences a secret, was the safest choice for everyone involved. You may not see it, but I know it."

"How can you say that?" Castle growls, his heart rate accelerating in his chest, his anger beating out an unsteady rhythm against his brittle ribcage.

"The grief of losing someone you love is staggering, as I'm sure Kate knows all too well," Hunt murmurs, eliciting the grind of Kate's jaw, the tension rushing through her frame causing her body to go rigid in his arms. "You two… I've watched you both for years now and the things you will do for each other, to _attempt_ keeping each other safe…" Hunt shakes his head again, exasperated. "The risk of interference was too high and it was not one we could afford. You had to be subdued, both of you, and the best way to do that was to-"

"Break us," Kate finishes, her voice a tight wire, a breath away from snapping. "As long as you and your agency can sweep up your mess, package it up nicely in a neat little box, right? Doesn't matter how you do it or who suffers the consequences in the meantime for the sake of your _efficiency_."

"Can it not be enough that you two are together now?"

Castle's nostrils flare, but Beckett is speaking again.

"What if it were her?" Kate demands suddenly, earning a curious glint in Jackson Hunt's gaze. "You would just accept if someone told you your wife was dead? Just accept that the person you loved most in the world was gone?"

Castle watches his father's throat bob, a split second of hesitation, the first flicker of doubt Rick has ever seen the man harbor, emerging before he smothers it with that same quick, emotionless efficiency Kate had just sneered at.

"I would do what I had to, what was best for the mission." Hunt raises a hand before either of them can say more, but Castle has no words in response to that, and neither does Kate. "I think our conversation has come to an end and it's best that I go. I hope you can both someday understand that the decisions I made were not done with ill intent, only with your best interests in mind."

"The best interest to ensure that the CIA was free of any more problematic members, you mean?" Kate throws back, earning nothing more than a sigh in return. No question there then. Mason Wood and Caleb Brown would likely remain a stain on the agency's name for years to come despite their last month of damage control.

"LokSat is finished," Castle states, regaining his father's attention, and Hunt nods in reply. "Therefore, there won't be a need for you to contact us again, for you to ever have any form of dictation over our lives for any reason in the future. We should never see you again."

His father holds his gaze. "No, you likely won't."

Something in his chest aches, a different kind of hurt, separate from the burn of a bullet, from the loss of his wife. The sensation of choosing to cut his father out of his life, the uncertainty that comes with it. Hunt had never been a part of it to begin with, but this was the first time Rick had ever been allowed to decide on his own terms.

"You never existed anyway," he murmurs, echoing words Hunt had spoken years ago, the last time they had crossed paths.

 _I keep making the mistake of thinking's he's family._

"No, I haven't," Hunt concurs, casting his eyes to the flooring of the porch and then back over his shoulder. "I do hope you're both able to heal without issue and that you remain safe, happy."

Castle feels Kate's breath shudder through her chest, the back of her ribcage expanding to graze his torso.

"You too," she murmurs, civil but tired, the fury drained out of her. "You and Rita both."

Hunt offers a curl of his lips and turns to go, descending the porch steps without looking back, towards the black SUV ready to pull out of the gravel driveway. Castle is content to watch them go, done with the CIA, won't even mention them in any of his future theories, but the grunt of pain from his wife quickly snags his attention.

"Shit, your stomach," Castle breathes, gliding his hand down to cover the fingers she has pressed to the bullet wound below her ribcage.

"It's fine," she promises, turning her face into his neck, her forehead at his jaw and her lips at the line of his throat. "Just moved a little too fast, stretched too far."

"It was for a good cause."

She gasps a laugh at his throat. "Was it?"

"I'd like to think so. Though, I'm not sure whether I should be proud or concerned that I witnessed my wife slap my father across the face," Castle murmurs at her temple, stroking his thumb back and forth over her knuckles, grinning into her hair when she chokes on another breath of amusement.

"He's not… not necessarily a bad guy, but I don't regret it," she mumbles, her throat working with a rough swallow. "What he did, the part he played in killing us - it deserved at least that."

"Didn't kill us," he says, because he can't resist, can't let those words lie. "Just blinded us for a while. Worth a slap."

Kate chuckles, breathless and strained, and Rick carefully draws them back inside, kicks the door shut behind them, and guides his wife towards the short hallway that leads to their room.

"Nap?" she assumes, on the razor's edge of pleading, and Castle nods before she can, escorts her to her side of the bed before shuffling around to his own.

He'll emerge for a few minutes once she's asleep, clean the dishes from the table before Jim returns, but his chest is splintering with pain, he doesn't have to guess to know Kate's is too, and after the morning they've had, they could both use some extra rest.

"Just be here," Kate sighs as she reclines into the pillows at her back, welcoming the mold of his body at her side.

He wants to tangle their limbs, feel every inch of her nestled into the cove of his body, but the best he can do is adjust his arm to lie across her torso despite how it causes his sternum to twinge, draping the weight of his forearm along the interlude of uninterrupted, unmarred skin between her chest and her abdomen.

Kate slides her hand along his arm, her nails grazing through the hairs dyed gold by the sun that decorate his skin, covering the top of his knuckles with her palm, folding her fingers into the empty spaces of his above the lattice of her ribs.

"Just be here when I wake up."

Castle cranes his neck to touch his lips to the line of her hair.

"I'll be here."


	7. Chapter 7

The scent of cooking fish wakes her, memories of weekends spent on the lake with her dad, learning how to catch a meal, flittering through the haze of her mind. But the fond memories evoked by the smell of the familiar meal lingering in the air does nothing to combat the nausea the stench suddenly drags up.

Kate struggles to sit up, breathing through her nose and pursing her lips as she attempts to slide from Castle's side to the edge of the bed.

She barely makes it to the adjoining bathroom, falls to her knees in front of the toilet, and heaves up the majority of her breakfast from earlier, burning like acid on its way up her throat. Her chest shudders with the force of her retching, hot tears streaming from her eyes through the throb of agony consuming her entire body.

The gathering of her hair from her face seconds later is a relief, cool air rushing to caress her cheeks as Castle combs back the last of the strands from her forehead, wipes her tears as he goes.

"You're okay, Kate," his voice comes from beside her, attempting to soothe the ragged line of her body, the choked noise of her breathing and the fissures of agony it sends spiking through her veins. "Just breathe, sweetheart. You're going to be okay."

"Nauseous," she gets out, coughing around the word once it's scraped its way up the raw column of her throat, whimpering when the tremble of her body causes the pain in her chest, her abdomen, to splinter deeper. God, it's going to cut her in half-

"Slow breaths," he murmurs, one of his hands wiping away the sweat at her nape. "Just try to take slow breaths until it stops."

She attempts to tune the rise and fall of her chest, the work of her lungs, to the steady rhythm of his that she can feel at her back, to the anchor of his body, his voice, holding her together. Kate closes her eyes and eases back onto her heels as the splitting pain begins to recede, drifting into the uninjured side of Rick's chest at her shoulder. He waits with her, patiently as the minutes pass and she's certain that the upheaval of her insides is over with.

"I need to get out of the house," she croaks, drawing the lid of the toilet down, murmuring in appreciation when Castle flushes for her.

"Fresh air?" he assumes, gripping the sink to hoist himself back to his feet before extending his arms to guide her up alongside him.

She snags her toothbrush and douses it in paste, ignoring the reflection of herself in the mirror. She'd caught a glimpse the night before, saw the haggard sight of her face, the sickly protrusion of bones threatening to pierce through the paled planes of her waxy skin. She had understood why Castle had looked so terribly worried beneath his shock upon seeing her again, the concern beneath his joy of being reunited.

She looked as if she literally had risen from the dead.

"Yeah, and I need to tell my dad that I can't… the smell of the fish is making me queasy."

Castle cocks his head at her from behind, the movement flashing in her peripheral while she places the brush in her mouth, scrubs her teeth with slow circular motions to avoid upsetting the pain lancing through her bones more than she already has.

"I thought you liked fish."

"I do," she mumbles around the toothbrush, bending carefully to spit out the paste once her mouth is cleansed, humming when sweeps her hair out of the way for a second time. "But when I woke up, I smelled it, and my stomach…"

"You're usually not a puker," Castle comments over her shoulder, his expression thoughtful when she lifts her eyes to his reflection in the glass. He must have woken not long after she staggered from the bed, his hair flat on one side, his eyes bright but still a little glossy from sleep. Adorable, her mind supplies, tugging on the corner of her mouth. "I mean, we've seen some gruesome things over the years and you never flinch."

"Probably just the gunshot wounds messing with my system," she murmurs, but her husband doesn't look convinced.

"Or maybe switching back to solid foods so quickly?" he theorizes, guilt threading through his furrowed brow. "I should have just asked Jim to bring you a smoothie instead of-"

"Castle, it was my choice to eat," she reminds him, reaching backwards to brush her hand at his outer thigh. "And we don't even know if that's the reason."

"What else could it be?"

Kate places her other hand over her stomach, calmed and no longer rioting, but something definitely felt off balance inside of her. More so than usual lately. "I don't know."

She had a hunch, though. Impossible as it was.

No way could a baby have survived the kind of trauma her body had endured, could it? And the doctor hadn't mentioned pregnancy, and they would have told her, would have _had_ to tell her something like that.

 _Just like they told you your husband was alive this whole time?_

"Kate?" Castle murmurs, stepping in closer to touch his chest to her back, offering silent support if she needs it. Sweet man.

"I'm fine, I'll be fine. Let's just go sit out by the water," she sighs, using the closeness of his body to turn her head, tilt her chin and dust her lips to his jaw.

It had to be something else. She wasn't pregnant. She couldn't be.

* * *

Rick flexes his toes in the cool water of the lake, his calves, humming in contentment at the kiss of the sun on his shoulders in contrast. Kate's cheek lifts against his shoulder, her foot drifting sideways beneath the surface to flirt with his under the dark blue screen of the water.

"Feeling better?" he asks, receiving the gentle nod of her head against him in answer.

Kate had made her best attempt at a beeline for the back door after they had emerged from the bathroom, covering her mouth with her hand and venturing to the dock of the lake while her father had watched her retreat in confusion. Castle had lagged behind to explain, apologize on his wife's behalf and discuss what alternative meal to conjure up for Kate since the fish had apparently triggered some strange gag reflex.

"Funny," Jim had murmured, his brow knit and something more on the tip of his tongue, but the older man had shaken his head in dismissal, returned to the kitchen to remove the fish from the stovetop.

The cabin was airing out now, all of the doors and windows ajar to clear the scent of fish from their temporary home, while Rick tried to ignore the nagging worry coursing through his system. Waking up to the sound of her choking on sobs through her vomiting, unable to control the pain wracking her frame, had been horrifying, and he would do whatever he could to help prevent it from happening again.

But how could they stop it if they had no idea what had triggered the sudden sickness in the first place?

"Castle, when do we tell everyone?"

Rick's brow furrows. "Tell everyone… oh, that we're - oh."

He hadn't even thought – shit, his daughter. His mother. No one knew he and Kate were alive except for Jim Beckett.

"Yeah, _oh_ ," she chuckles, but the sound is strained, already fading before it leaves her lips. "I think we need to make some calls, break the news to Alexis and Martha in person. Lanie, Espo, and Ryan too."

"They'd all have to make the drive to us," Castle murmurs, staring at their feet in the water. "Neither one of us is really up for a road trip right now."

"No," she sighs, something sorrowful in the exhale of her breath, and Rick shifts, attempts to gain a better view of her face, but all he gets is the slant of her profile, the kiss of the midday light on her cheek, the shadow her lashes and the slope of her nose. "At this rate, I'll need another few weeks before I can travel."

"We can ask your dad to call my mom, she'll bring Alexis and…"

He can feel the crawl of tension up her spine, spreading like outstretched fingers through her body, clinging to her muscles, her bones, infusing her with dread. And he can't be certain, but he's pretty sure he can already sense the guilt consuming her, threatening to drown her from the inside out.

"Kate, you know you had no control over what happened, right?"

She's quiet for a long moment, too long for him, before she finally lifts her head from his shoulder, angles her face towards him, but directs her eyes to his chin.

"Maybe not over this, over our 'deaths'," she states, her lips twisting with that last word. "But ultimately, I'm the one who's responsible for this, Rick."

"Beckett-"

"I had a choice and I put you at risk, dragged you right into the crosshairs with me." Her throat ripples with a rough swallow, her jaw tight and squaring, as if bracing for a punch, and what is it going to take to make this woman _see_ \- "If they would have just gone after me-"

"Stop. Right now, stop talking," he snaps, demands, earning the startled flutter of her eyes, and good. He has her attention. "Do you have any idea what kind of hell… fuck, Beckett, I would rather be dead with you, faking it apart from you, than have to go on living without you."

"But you did," she argues, confusion leaking into the lines around her mouth, branching out from the corners of her eyes. "For the last month, we both thought-"

"But you wouldn't have died alone. If I hadn't been involved, if I had been left in the dark and LokSat had gone after you alone, if some agent had come to tell me my wife was dead…" Rick shakes his head, screws his eyes shut in frustration. He's probably making no sense, probably sounds utterly pathetic, insane even, but he continues on, desperate for her to understand the insanity. To finally _get it_. "We died together on that floor, Kate. And maybe it's morbid of me, but if that was how our story ended, in tragedy? Then I damn well better be by your side until the very last second."

When she doesn't respond and he still lacks the courage to look at her, Castle opens his eyes, ascends his gaze to the cloudless sky overhead, the shivering branches of trees nearby, their leaves bright green with the promise of a vibrant summer.

"Before I found you with Mason that night, before the boys and the NYPD infiltrated where I was being held, they put me under a truth serum," he recalls, realizing he had yet to tell her any of this. Hadn't had the chance. "Before Mason came in to interrogate me about LokSat, one of his… henchmen, yeah, that's a good description for that guy," he mutters with disdain, sensing a flicker of amusement from his wife without having to spare her a glance. "He asked me basic questions, one of them was about you. Why I would choose to put myself in life-threatening danger just to be with you."

"Rick," she breathes, but Castle reaches for her knee, squeezes gently to quiet her, just long enough for him to get this out, to explain and hopefully convey all he needs to say with this story.

"Before you, I was an incorrigible playboy, he'd pointed out. He wanted to know what had made me change and the answer was easy. It was you. Meeting you, falling in love with you, because I had never met anyone like you, Kate," he murmurs, the smile flirting with the corners of his mouth, images of a striking detective with spiked short hair and gorgeous eyes flashing through his mind. "I told him how you challenge me, make me laugh, how I fell in love with your heart, your brains, your hotness." His smile grows and Kate's does too when she presses it to his shoulder again. "How you make me a better man. And then he asked me if I had the chance for a do over, to go back and change my fate, if I would take it."

She's holding her breath beside him, even though she must already know his answer, she still waits with her chest tight and her eyes trained on his cheek.

"I told him that I wouldn't," Castle states with ease. "And that will always be my answer, Kate. There is nothing in this world that could ever convince me to give you up, give up the life we built, the love we have. And I'd never change a single sentence of our story."

Beckett's hand slips from beneath his and Castle shifts his gaze from the sky, from the lap of the water at their legs, to see Kate drawing her feet up from the lake, rising to her knees and reaching for his face. He doesn't have the chance to react, to do anything more than steady her with a hand at her waist as her palms cradle his cheeks and her mouth slants over his.

Her kiss is desperate, needful, but the caress of her lips soft, the work of her mouth ardent and the stroke of her tongue glorious, ending all too soon.

"I love you," she whispers into the corner of his mouth, already so breathless, her chest hitching with shallow bursts against his shoulder, but he doesn't stop the returning brush of her lips to his. Can't stop the heat of her mouth from opening above his, the moan that climbs her throat, born of pleasure over pain. Can't stop the sweep of her tongue, the heat she paints to the roof of his mouth with sure strokes and dizzying sparks.

The spread of tender warmth, the welcome rise of growing flames, melts the last of the chilled places inside of him born from the last month, burns through the last of his barriers, her mouth and her body sealed against him, a part of him. Joined with her again after thinking he'd lost her forever.

"Kate," he gasps, his fingers fisting in the back of her shirt while hers coil at his ears, the caress of her thumb along the warm shell gentling them both. "Don't want you to hurt."

"Crazy for you," she mumbles, smirking when his eyebrows arch. Not the response he had been expecting, but he'll take it. "That's what I told Mason, when he was bringing me to the location. That you were the love of my life."

The explanation steals what little breath he had left, leaves him without air, but smiling up at his wife, haloed by the glow of the sun overhead, staring down at him with the flecks of gold illuminating her pupils, the swirls of greens and the sea of amber.

She had a point, it wouldn't be easy to explain any of this to their family, their friends, but he was willing to face any challenge with her by his side. They would find a way to contact his mother and Alexis, Lanie and the boys, and they would continue to heal, allow their wounds to close and scar over. And then they would move on. Onto the next chapter.

"I want us to go on that cross country road trip next year." Kate's eyes flicker with surprise, followed quickly by approval as her hands slip down to drape along the sides of his neck, her palms warm over the skin of his throat while her fingers press gently to the thrum of his pulse.

"Paris first," she whispers, leaning forward to feather her lips to the skin between his eyebrows. "As soon as we can fly-"

"Yes," he nods, flattening his palm at the base of her spine, ignoring the sharp stab in his chest as he helps control her descent back to the dock, back to sitting pressed in close at his side. "Paris in the fall."

Kate hums, the sound vibrating through her frame, a pleasant current of electricity traveling through his.

"And maybe… maybe the Hamptons next month? Alexis and your mom could stay for a while, my dad too if he wants?"

His throat constricts with emotion, flooded and waterlogged with it, but after the past month, to be perched on the dock of the lake belonging to her father's cabin, making plans for the next month, the next year – it strikes him with an all encompassing form of relief he had to work to breathe past.

"I'd love that."


	8. Chapter 8

Her father was the one to make the call that evening, talking to Martha Rodgers for the better half of an hour after dinner, requesting her presence along with Alexis's at their earliest convenience, but holding back the true reason for his hopes of a visit. Castle's mother didn't hesitate to accept, her friendship with Jim Beckett still quite strong, though Beckett is sure it will take some effort to coerce Alexis into joining her.

But Kate had faith in Martha, looked forward to seeing her in just a few short hours.

"Did you sleep at all?" Castle inquires from beside her that morning, his head at her hip and his clouded blue eyes staring up at her in the early morning break of day.

She's sitting up in the bed, propped against the headboard for support, and she uses the advantage of her position to comb her fingers through his hair, trail her nails along his scalp and circle her thumb at his temple. She had slept, on and off like usual, more thoroughly after Castle had woken at two a.m. to find her still awake and clutching her chest with silent tears illuminated in her eyes by the moonlight. He had convinced her to swallow half of her pain pill, accepted the bargain she managed to present in her aching state and done the same with his own medication, sending them both into unconsciousness.

It's the first time she's slept a consistent four hours, but it's seven a.m. now, his family would be here by noon, and no way would she be able to rest with the current sliver of anxiety embedded within her chest, stuttering in time with the consistent throb of her gunshot wounds.

"Slept enough," she supplies in answer, content to stay like this, warm in their bed with Castle relaxed and dozing beside her, but his eyes flutter open once more.

"Don't be nervous," he yawns, wincing at the expanding rise of his chest with the action, the tightness of his scar stretching to accommodate. She knows that feeling well.

"I'm not," she murmurs, but Castle's rolls his eyes at her, tugs a smile to her lips at the reaction.

"You're chewing on your bottom lip. Only do that when you're concentrating hard or nervous. Or trying to drive me crazy."

"How do you know it's not the latter?" she muses, following the line of his hair with her index fingers, dusting the rest of her digits along the smooth plane of his forehead.

"Because then you'd drive yourself crazy too since you would be forced to resist me, which we both know you are powerless to do."

"Mm, yeah, how'd I ever forget that?" she mutters wryly, earning an amused curl of his mouth that she wants to taste, but god forbid she try leaning to reach him and end up ripping her body in two.

"Mother's going to be thrilled," he tells her, his cheek pressing harder against her outer thigh. "Alexis will be a bit shell-shocked at first, but then it'll hit her and she won't feel anything but relief, happiness to see us both."

Kate continues to card her fingers through his hair, stroking back the strands that tend to cling to his forehead in the mornings, but Castle opens his eyes to her when she remains silent, so blue and confident, shimmering with conviction bright enough to spread his hopefulness to her.

"I hope you're right."

"I know I'm right," he huffs softly, skimming his hand beneath the covers to curl his fingers in the back of her bare knee.

They had worked together to shower last night, Castle washing her hair, allowing her to lather shampoo through his as well, both of them covered in suds and turning their shower to a bath when Kate's thighs began to quiver with the effort of standing and Castle's arms trembled from trying to hold her steady.

"And when our family from the precinct shows up, Lanie will be threaten to smack us both, Esposito will want to track down Hunt and Rita, make them pay, and Ryan will just be grateful we're both alive," Castle continues his musings, brushing his thumb back and forth over the side of her patella.

"You make it sound so easy," she replies, tracing the curve of his brow, the scar that lies above.

"Not easy, just not as hard as you think it'll be."

"Go back to sleep, Castle," she says, her voice soft, quiet, concealing how badly she hopes for his words to ring true, hopes that she's just overthinking it, conjuring up the worst case scenarios to prepare herself for a negative reaction that won't happen, worrying for no reason. She can't remember the last time she so desperately wanted to be wrong.

"Only if you lie back down with me," he throws back, his brow wiggling beneath the touch of her thumb, and Kate rolls her eyes, but eases her body back to the mattress, into the embrace of Castle's arm around her neck, his fingers in her hair. "It's going to be okay, I promise."

Kate turns her head into the whisper of his lips at her temple, closes her eyes and narrows her focus to the touch of his mouth at her forehead, his breath coating her skin. There were so few promises, people, she could place her trust in, but she would always believe in him, in his words. Especially now, when she needed them most.

* * *

Beckett hadn't slept throughout those two hours they remained in bed after he had woken to her bathed in light and worry above him. The nausea from yesterday had returned, less violently this time, but to control the upheaval of her stomach, Kate had remained curled in bed, focusing entirely on her breathing for a good half hour.

Rick had abandoned his place beside her only once, shuffling his way to the kitchen to retrieve a glass of water for her, running into Jim before he could return.

"Katie okay?" he'd asked with concern that had been present since the day before, a spark of fear in his eyes that he shared with Castle.

"I don't know," Rick had sighed, cupping the glass of water between both of his hands. "She's nauseas again, doing everything she can to avoid throwing up, but she's never had this issue, and she told me it never happened during her last recovery either."

Jim had crossed his arms over his chest in contemplation, casting his eyes to the landline in the living room.

"I know today is going to be a busy one, but let me make a call, see if I can have someone out to check on her tomorrow, later this evening if necessary."

"A doctor?"

Jim had nodded. "After her last shooting, Kate hadn't been able to take too many rides to town for the first month. She didn't want to see a doctor anyway, but I'd been worried about her, called a friend of mine who's worked as the local doc here since she was a kid. He made the house call, checked on her wound to make sure it was healing properly, and assured me to call again if we needed him to come back."

A knot in Castle's chest, a small, tied up cluster of anxiety that he hadn't even noticed amidst the mess within his sternum, had unfurled with relief.

"That sounds perfect actually."

"For the record, I don't think there's anything severely wrong," Jim had tried to quell his unease. "Whatever's causing the nausea, it seems to be a passing thing. Otherwise, she's been okay. Well, as okay as she can be in her current state."

"I just hope whatever it is doesn't set her back any further in her recovery," Rick had murmured, glancing back towards the open bedroom doorway. "The healing process is already hard enough."

Her body couldn't withstand anything more.

" _Castle_ ," she hisses, digging her nails into the tops of his thighs.

"Sorry, sorry," he murmurs, retracting the comb from her hair and working the tangles free with just his fingers. "I assure you, I'm making good progress."

Once the nausea had finally passed, once she was able to sit up without the room spinning or her stomach flipping, Rick had helped drag her duffel bag over to the bed, sifted through the meager amount of clothing it contained. She was hardly one to display self-consciousness, but he could sense it in her now, the desire to look "presentable" and "more human", as she'd put it, for his mother and daughter bringing her frustration.

So he had offered to do the one thing he could think of to help that she couldn't do for herself. He'd offered to brush her hair.

Kate grunts when he encounters another tangle, but she doesn't complain, not once. He knows she hasn't been able to properly wash her hair in days, usually standing beneath the spray, allowing the water to rain down over her, wet her hair and sluice down her skin, but unable to lift her arms, lather shampoo and conditioner through the locks without his help. The strands hadn't had proper care afterwards either, drying in a riot around her face, wild and gorgeous, and quite impossible to tame.

"Doing okay?" he murmurs, his fingers circling where he'd had to tug on her hair just a little, massaging her scalp and earning the backwards tilt of her skull into his palms.

"Mm, feels nice."

"I used to do this for Alexis when she was little," Castle recalls with a smile quirking at the corners of his mouth.

He would be seeing his daughter again for the first time in over a month in less than an hour and it had his heart somersaulting in his chest. It had been a little easier not to worry about Alexis while he had been stowed away at the cabin, knowing his daughter was safe, receiving weekly progress reports from Jim, who had made a habit to catch up with Martha for lunch every Sunday.

Today was the first Sunday his mother would be coming to Jim instead.

"I imagine she was a bit easier to manage," Kate muses, curling her fingers at his knees to refrain from drifting back against him. "You're dealing with a rat's nest back there."

Castle scoffs at her, scratches his short nails at her scalp before bringing the comb back to her hair, running the teeth through the unsnarled strands. "It'll be easier after this first time, just gotta keep it up."

"The nurse at the Vermont house would have to drag me into the bathroom, place me in the shower chair while she washed it for me, dried and combed it," she admits, her voice faraway, back in a secluded house in the middle of a forest, and Rick forces himself not to falter, to continue brushing through the locks of her hair without pause even as his chest clenches at the mention of it. "Rita had always played an understanding role, but the nurse, I think… I'm pretty sure that woman hated me, Castle. I was so useless and I made her job so ridiculously hard."

She states the assumption with humor, self-deprecation, but Rick has to grit his teeth to repress a growl, distracts himself with the sweep of her hair over her shoulder to expose the naked line of her neck beneath. Her fingers clench at his knees when he touches his lips to the top of her vertebrae.

"I feel no sympathy."

A gentle huff slips past her lips, her head turning to catch a glimpse of him, but Castle uses the angle to smear a kiss to her jaw, taste the slicing bone of her cheek.

"Also, your hair is officially tangle free."

"Consider me impressed," Kate grins, the sleeve of the sweater draped over her frame slipping to expose her right shoulder, the vulnerable patch of marred flesh beneath her collarbone. She's lost so much weight, all of her clothes hanging loose and shapeless across her bones; the sweater they'd found at the bottom of her bag was one of the few blouses that would stay without swallowing her.

When the doctor came tomorrow, he'd attempt to have a word with the man about Kate's diet, look into what foods would aid quickest in a healthy weight gain.

"Stop thinking so hard, babe," she murmurs, the endearment on her tongue tugging a matching grin to his lips, and Castle draws the fabric of her sweater up, ducks his head to the bare curve of skin before he settles it back into place.

"How're you feeling?"

"Stiff, achy," she mutters, the attempt at masking her pain level with him one she had abandoned long ago. "But I'll be able to be up for a while, spend time with Alexis and Martha."

Castle places the comb on the mattress space beside him, glides his hand around to splay over the wound beneath her ribs, the center of his palm shielding the fresh scar, his fingers fanning out to graze the sensitive skin that surrounds it, the faded incision scar carved out above.

"How about you?" she inquires, grazing her fingers along his forearm, coiling the digits at his wrist.

"Dull throb," he murmurs in return. "Better with each day."

Kate hums her approval, squeezes his wrist and brushes her thumb up and down the inside of it, over the reassurance of his pulse that she so often favors.

"Mother and Alexis-" The distinctive sound of an engine in the driveway, the crunch of gravel beneath car tires, silences him. "Are apparently here earlier than expected."

"Rick, Katie," Jim calls, knocking once on the bedroom door before nudging it open, his brow quirked in askance. "I believe Martha and Alexis just pulled up. Are you two ready?"

Kate uses the support of Rick's thighs, bracketing hers while he'd brushed her hair, to ease herself up from the edge of the mattress. "Yeah, Dad. Are you still okay with providing a quick disclaimer before they see us?"

Castle follows after his wife, scooting to the edge of the bed where his legs already hung from the side and planting his feet to the floor, rising at her back with a grunt he swallows down.

"Of course. I don't think I did too bad of a job preparing Rick when I brought you home," Jim muses, tentative teasing sparkling in her father's dark eyes while Kate rolls hers.

"Oh yeah, you did fine with me. It was Kate who passed out," Castle tosses back, earning a gentle pinch to his arm for it while Jim chuckles from the doorway.

"I'll do my best to give you guys a cue in the conversation, otherwise, just step in when you're ready, alright?"

Castle nods before Jim can start back down the hallway, his footsteps bounding through the living room to the front door. He notices Beckett sparing a glance to herself in the bathroom mirror, disapproval flashing in her eyes before she blinks it away with acceptance, begins her slow shuffle towards the open door.

"Ready for this?" Castle murmurs from beside her, leaning against one side of the doorframe while Kate clutches the opposite edge, her gaze trained on the empty hallway that separates them from the rest of the cabin, from his family.

"Yeah, you?" But she already knows his answer, the smile already sparking on her lips for him, even as her teeth gnaw on the tender flesh yet again.

"I'm nervous. But the happy kind of nervous."

Kate shifts from the doorframe, closer to his side where she can reach for his hand, press their palms together in a kiss.

"Like you said, nothing to be nervous about, Castle."

"Jim, so lovely to see you!" the voice of his mother echoes through the cabin, rich and filling, but lacking the exuberant flair he remembered, falling flat instead. Castle sucks in a breath, goes perfectly still beside his wife, reminded to breathe by the rhythmic squeeze of her hand. "Is everything alright, dear? You sounded quite urgent when we spoke on the phone yesterday."

"I'm fine, Martha, thank you," Castle listens to Jim Beckett return, muffled murmurs and short seconds of silence following, exchanges of hugs and words of condolences, Rick assumes. "There's just something I needed to talk to you both about and it needed to be done in person. I'm sorry I couldn't have just come to you, but I-"

"Oh, nonsense. It was a beautiful drive, a nice chance to get our heads out of the city for the day, right, Alexis?"

Castle's heart clenches at the sound of his daughter's name, the confirmation that she's actually _here_.

"Yeah, and it's good to see you again, Mr. Beckett," Rick listens to his daughter respond, her voice polite but weary, wrought with tension. Alexis had always liked Jim, gravitated towards the older man's quiet confidence, sly sense of humor, but now she speaks to him like a stranger.

"You too, Alexis. Both of you. Can I get you anything?"

"Thank you, but we're good," his mother insists, the thump of the front door resounding through the cabin. "Honestly, we're both a little eager - as well as anxious - to learn why we were asked here. I've never known you to be so cryptic."

"I apologize about that as well," Jim offers and Kate shifts restlessly at Castle's side, her breath fanning out at his shoulder, and Rick spreads his fingers at the base of her spine, stays her. Just a little more time, a few more seconds of waiting. "But I needed… I needed to talk to you about Katie and Rick."

The room is silent and Kate frees her thumb from the embrace of their hands, presses the tip of her finger to the jittery throb of his pulse.

"What more is there to talk about?" Alexis inquires, only a sliver of curiosity in the question, but otherwise, nothing, the words dry and emotionless. His daughter had shut down. Shit, what had he done to his little girl?

"There's been a development concerning their - deaths," Jim states, his words stretched thin, his voice tight. Kate's father may have been the only one to know of Castle's survival, and then of his own daughter's, but Rick knew better than to think the man had healed from it all. Jim Beckett was just far better at hiding it. "I - I think it'd be better if I showed you rather than attempt to explain."

"I think that's our cue," Castle whispers, glancing down to his wife, to the anxious amber of her eyes staring past him into the living room. "Kate."

Her gaze lifts to him, a forced smile stringing itself across her lips, but he doesn't want that, doesn't want her to be so worried that she looks like she's on the verge of a panic attack.

"It's going to be okay, I promise you, love," he breathes, pressing a firm kiss to her forehead that sends her breath skittering out against the exposed skin of his throat. "Now, come on."

Castle twines their fingers, waits for her to take the first step, and walks out to meet their family.


	9. Chapter 9

The second they step into the room, they catch the attention of everyone in it, and for one long, terrible moment, there is no response. No movement or sound, only the encouraging rise of her father's gaze to hers, the matching blue eyes wide with shock between the two redheads standing frozen only a few feet away.

And then Martha Rodgers speaks.

"Oh my god!" she cries out, a hand to her mouth, starting towards them, Alexis jerking into action behind her grandmother. "Richard!"

Kate releases his hand as his mother sweeps in to embrace him, shameless tears streaking down her cheeks.

"Oh, careful, Mother. I'm so glad to see you, but I have a gunshot wound," he rasps, returning the wrap of her arms and smearing a kiss to her stained cheeks.

Alexis stands a couple of steps behind, disbelief encompassing her from head to toe, the lengthened strands of her fiery red hair framing her face, making her look like a little girl who's just seen a ghost, so lost and afraid. She turns the ice shards of her eyes, still blown wide with astonishment, to Kate, as if she believes that the only person who can prove this moment true or not is the woman who has never sugarcoated things for the younger Castle's sake.

"You're alive?" she gets out, her voice small, childlike, and Martha pulls back from her son, reaches out for her granddaughter, but Alexis's gaze remains glued to Beckett, waiting for confirmation.

"We're alive," Beckett replies, and like a switch has been flipped to 'on', Alexis surges forward, arches on the tips of her toes to wrap her arms around Castle's neck. She must have caught the warning about his injury, her body held stiff and away from his chest, but her face burrows into his neck, her entire frame beginning to shake and tremble with the soft sounds of her cries.

"And oh, Katherine," Martha breathes, maneuvering towards her with a watery smile, her warm hands rising to cup Beckett's face in her palms. "Oh darling, I have never been happier to see you."

The hug Martha draws her into is tender, like the older woman already knows that if Castle is injured, Kate must be too. His mother lifts one of her hands to stroke through the untangled strands of her hair when Beckett rests her chin to Martha's shoulder, her palms splayed flat beneath the woman's quaking shoulder blades.

Kate had hoped that she would refrain from crying, that for the first time in over a month, she could be a pillar of strength for Castle, for the family they now shared, but his mother whispering gentle words in her ear, how relieved she was to have both of them back, how much she loved them, had the silent tears spilling down her cheeks.

Martha releases her with delicate hands at her shoulders, shimmering blue eyes assessing her with worry. "What happened to the both of you? They told us… at the hospital, they said you had both died from bullets to the heart."

Beckett swallows hard at the news, information she had yet to learn, but shakes her head.

"No, no - we… until only a couple of days ago, I thought Castle was dead, and he thought I was too," Kate begins to explain, but his mother's brow rockets to her hairline.

"We were _all_ lied to? Why on earth-"

"It was Hunt," Castle cuts in, his arms secure around Alexis's back, her head tucked at his good shoulder and her fingers curled tightly in her father's shirt. "They wanted to be certain the investigation into LokSat was over, so they took both Kate and I straight from the hospital into protective custody. Separately. I was brought here, Kate was taken to a safe house out of state, and we spent the past month dead to the world. And each other."

"Oh my god," Martha exclaims, anger rising in her voice. "That's absolutely preposterous! Forcing you both to fake your deaths, but not even allowing you to do it together? I was aware that your father lacked empathy, Richard, but this is just horrible."

"Is it over?" Alexis finally speaks up, her head lifting from Castle's shoulder. "Are you both allowed... allowed to be alive now?"

"Yeah, Pumpkin. Kate's dad was able to go pick her up the day before yesterday and as soon as we're both fit to travel, we thought maybe we could spend the last half of our recovery all together in the Hamptons." Castle casts his gaze to her, seeking her approval, but her chest is aching too fiercely for her to manage a nod.

"Why weren't they able to tell us?" Alexis asks suddenly, hurt and instinctive accusation flaring in her eyes. "We could have kept it a secret too, we-"

"I was told that the only reason I was allowed to harbor Richard throughout this past month was because I had minimal connections and the cabin here is so secluded, the risk to his safety was containable," Jim explains from the other side of the room, watching the entire exchange in solitude, an outsider like she had always been, and Kate wishes he'd come closer, join the huddle Alexis and Martha have created. "And I wasn't informed about Katie until earlier this week, just a few days before I was able to go pick her up from the house in Vermont."

"They wanted us isolated," Kate murmurs, curling an arm around her abdomen, sealing her palm to the familiar splinter of pain cracking through her ribs. "Subdued and crippled by loss. That way they didn't have to worry about us getting in the way, making a bigger mess of things with LokSat than I already had."

"Kate," Castle starts, but his mother's outrage overpowers the reproach of his voice.

"Utter and unnecessary cruelty," Martha scoffs, true disgust staining her tone, and Jim nods his agreement. "You're both already shot and wounded, what inconvenience would you have posed?"

"Beckett and I make each other stronger, I guess they figured that out," Castle sighs, rubbing a hand up and down Alexis's back.

"So you were both really shot?" Alexis breathes, drawing back from her father to assess him from head to toe, worry spreading like bright blue flames through her eyes. "Are - are you both okay?"

"I'm doing much better, sweetie," Castle promises his daughter, pecking a kiss to her forehead. "I was shot once, closer to my shoulder than my chest really. Kate is the one… Kate's healing process is going to be a bit tougher."

Martha's eyes trip down to the arm Beckett has banded around her midsection, the reflexive, inward coil of her body to appease the outward ripples of pain from each bullet hole.

"One shot to the chest, like Castle's, another to my abdomen," Kate explains before someone can ask, wincing at Martha's horrific gasp, her cheeks heating at the amount of attention now placed on her. "But I've been doing better since I was brought here. Since I learned Castle was okay."

"Here, darling, you should sit-"

"Wait," Alexis murmurs and Kate raises her gaze to see the other woman coming towards her, moisture still glistening in her eyes, her irises like sapphires. Beckett does not expect the careful slide of his daughter's arms around her shoulders, the tentative rest of her chin to Beckett's trapezius muscle, the stuttered inhale she sucks in. She had expected immense relief and gratitude to flood from Alexis at the sight of her father, of course, but not for her as well. "I'm so glad you're both okay. I thought - it was bad enough, but worse knowing both of you were gone. Half my family was gone."

Kate returns Alexis's embrace with trembling arms around the younger woman's back, knowing better than to soothe, to comfort. Alexis had Castle for that, her grandmother; she often sought Kate for brutal truths, for genuine reassurances, for confidence and courage.

Her bond with Alexis had always been off balanced, strained and shaken from the beginning, but once they had found a common ground, a friendship, Castle's daughter had shown her acceptance, fierce loyalty. The shared strength of a family, something she hoped to give Alexis now. Not that she had much left.

"I'm sorry," Kate whispers, feeling Alexis's chin quivering at her shoulder like the little girl she had never had the chance of knowing. "I'm so sorry this happened, Alexis."

"I'm sorry too, sorry you had to get shot again, had to think Dad was dead," Alexis chokes out, but she sucks in a breath after the words are out, swipes at her eyes and works to calm herself before she pulls away from Beckett. "But you're both safe now? LokSat is really over and when you're better, you can come home?"

"Yeah, we're certain it's done," Kate promises, squeezing Alexis's arm before finally allowing Martha to herd her towards the couch, grateful for the embrace of the cushion beneath her, the support of the sofa at her back. "Hunt came by yesterday to assure us of it."

"Kate slapped him," Castle reveals, a little too gleefully.

"You did what?" Jim questions, his brow forming a high arc on his forehead.

"Castle," she growls, but her body rejoices when he lowers himself to sit beside her, his thigh flush against hers and his hand drifting to the resting place of her knee.

"Atta girl," Martha praises while Alexis hums her agreement and takes a careful seat on the edge of the sofa next to Castle.

"Sounds like he deserved it."

"It was a proud moment," Castle concurs, fitting his palm between Beckett's knees, curling his fingers into the warm alcove the back of her knee forms. "Got our point across rather well."

"Castle's the one who ensured he wouldn't bother us again," Kate corrects, the curve of her shoulder sliding into place alongside his, her fingers gliding up his forearm to curl at the inside of his elbow.

"What did you say to him, Dad?" Alexis asks, but Castle only offers his daughter a smile, uses his opposite hand to pat her knee.

"I just told him that we wouldn't be seeing him again and he agreed," Rick explains, his demeanor calm, but despite everything Jackson Hunt has done, Beckett knows it wasn't an easy decision for Castle to make, to turn his father away with a finality that ensured they really would never see the man again. But it wasn't the wrong decision either.

"And you're sure we don't need him anymore?" Alexis pushes, her eyes flickering between Kate and her dad with her worry subdued, but still alive in her irises. "I'm not happy with what he did, not at all, but the CIA has some of the best security in existence, right? And what if-"

"There's not going to be anything that we need safety from anymore, not from the CIA," Kate speaks up, pressing her fingertips into the warmth of Castle's skin. "No more conspiracies, no more secret agencies, and hopefully, no more near death experiences. No more being in danger."

"Amen to that," Martha chimes in, sauntering across the living room to stand beside Jim, hooking her arm through the loop of Kate's father's. His mother is a pro at infusing levity into such heavy situations, but Beckett can still feel Castle carrying some of the weight beside her even when Alexis slumps beside him with relief. He knows it as well as she does – there will always be danger. "I would personally love something to drink, maybe a small snack for us all while we continue chatting."

"I have a ton of fruit in the fridge," Jim suggests. "We can do smoothies?"

"A marvelous idea!"

Their parents retreat to the kitchen, the clanging of appliances soon following, and Kate notices Alexis curling her knees up on the sofa, her body coiled and turned into Castle's side, her cheek on his shoulder and her eyes fluttering closed. Content, for what looked to be the first time in a long time.

"See?" Castle murmurs, angling his head to press the words against her temple. "It's all okay. Don't you love it when I'm right?"

"Not as much as you do," she mutters, grinning as he buries his laughter in her hair. "But yeah, Castle, I'm definitely glad you were right."

"I'll savor this moment."

"You should," she muses, her lips curling, the accompanying rise of her cheek grazing his chin. "Probably won't happen again for a while."

* * *

Beckett drifts from the kitchen filled with their family, shares a look with Castle and awaits the nod of his acknowledgement before she retreats through the sliding glass door onto the peace of the back porch. The past few hours with Martha and Alexis had been wonderful, a welcome and comforting taste of normalcy, but she could admit that the reunion had been somewhat overwhelming. After a month of solitude, no human contact save for Rita and the nurse she can't even recall the name of, followed by two days with only her father and Castle, it took every ounce of energy she had to socialize now.

Not to mention her newest scars were reaching new heights of agony, the hammering throbs of pain reverberating through her bones, threatening to shatter her.

Beckett releases the quiet breath of suffering as she takes a seat on the top step of the porch, screws her eyes shut until the starbursts of pain have dulled and the white spots dancing through her vision have dissipated.

"Kate?"

Her eyes fly open and Beckett lifts her head to find his daughter emerging from the back door, onto the porch and taking a hesitant seat beside her on the step.

"Hey, dinner going okay in there?" Kate asks, hoping the smile she pastes on meets Alexis's approval, but Alexis is staring at her knees.

"Yeah, Jim and my dad are making some kind of vegetable stir fry thing," Alexis chuckles, curving her hands at her shins. "Why are you out here?"

"Oh, I just wanted to avoid any chance of becoming nauseous again," Kate explains on a sigh, earning a puzzled look from his daughter, a flick of her eyes to her abdomen that has Beckett draping her palm to her gunshot wound. "My stomach has been feeling off lately and I've been getting queasy. Not ideal to throw up when your upper body feels like it's made of glass."

Alexis winces and Beckett pierces her bottom lip with her teeth. Probably should have dialed back the honesty for this part of the conversation.

"Is upset stomach a side effect to being shot in the abdomen?"

"I - I'm not sure," Kate confesses, spreading her fingers to span across the shredded muscles of her stomach, still trying not to think too hard about what could be causing the strange onset of nausea. "But what are you doing out here?" she counters, quirking her brow at his daughter once she finally lifts her eyes back to Beckett's waiting gaze.

"I wanted to talk to you," Alexis admits, her fingers flexing over her jeans, a nervous gesture that has Kate chewing harder on her bottom lip.

"Is it about your dad?" Beckett inquires, might as well just get straight to the point, get it over with. "Because I understand if you're upset with me, but I-"

"Upset with… no, that's not what – well, that is actually why I wanted to talk to you," Alexis sighs, detaching her fingers from her shins to tuck her hair behind her ears. "Kate, since you and my dad became a couple, I know I haven't always been the most supportive."

"Alexis, we've talked about this," Kate murmurs, trying to save his daughter from any unnecessary apologies, but Alexis is adamant when she shakes her head.

"No, we haven't. Not like we should have." Alexis purses her lips and furrows her brow, concentrating hard on her words, on picking them carefully. "After Dad disappeared on your wedding day, you spent every waking moment looking for him and I'd always known you cared about him, even before you were together. But that summer he was missing… you pretty much erased any doubts I'd had in you, about how much you loved him."

Kate tangles her fingers together in her lap, rhythmically strokes her thumb along the band of her wedding ring to calm the anxious flutter of her heart. She had no idea where Alexis was going with this and she wasn't sure she wanted to find out.

"I think before that I always resented you because part of me was jealous, having to share my dad with someone else." Alexis shakes her head, the light fringe of her lashes catching in the dying light of the sun as she rolls her eyes. "And knowing he was always putting himself in danger because of you. It was easier to blame you than to recognize that it was his choice. But after his disappearance, after you guys were able to get married… it finally sunk in how good you are for him, how good you've always been."

"He's good for me too," Kate adds, can't help the gentle curl of her lips at the statement. "Changed my life."

"And you changed his, and in turn, mine. After Dad killed off Derrick Storm, he wasn't the same. He would mope and brood and started partying again, but then you crashed his book party and it was like – like light shining in the windows of a dark, dusty old house," Alexis explains, her eyes sparking just like her father's when he's telling a good story. "He was so much happier again after he met you. And that's the main reason I wanted to talk to you, Kate. I wanted to thank you."

"Alexis, no-"

"No, listen," Alexis pleads, shifting on the porch step to face her. "I - I was so resentful towards you for so long, for such stupid reasons, and when I thought you were dead? I regretted it so much. Because I'm grateful to you, Kate. To what you are to my dad, to my family, and I'm sorry I ever made you doubt that."

Kate extends one of her hands to cover the tangle of Alexis's fingers atop her knees, feels some of his daughter's nerves drain beneath her palm. Alexis's initial dislike towards Kate had never been a well-kept secret. Since the flame of his daughter's disapproval had been extinguished, though, the two of them had formed a healthier relationship, even though the issues had never been addressed, the tension never completely gone. But now… the weight that had always existed around Alexis finally, for the first time in years, lifts from Kate's shoulders.

"Hey, it's okay," Beckett tells her, squeezing the girl's porcelain knuckles, only Alexis wasn't a girl anymore, was she? She had grown up, matured from the often spoiled child to a responsible young woman whom Kate could respect, admire. "I'm here, we both are, and once things are back to normal-"

"Better than normal," Alexis corrects, promises, earnest and insistent. "It's probably my dad rubbing off on me, but maybe this is the universe giving us all a second chance, you know? For things to be even better than they were before you were kil… before you guys were taken away."

"I think you're right." The corner of Kate's mouth quirks, pride for a daughter who is not her own, but close to her heart nonetheless, and she welcomes the tilt of Alexis's head to her shoulder. "That's definitely your dad rubbing off on you."

Alexis laughs, genuine and bright, a lovely sound that seems to draw Castle out from the house, onto the porch behind them.

"Am I missing a moment? I feel like I'm missing a really good moment," he whines, easing his way down to sit beside Kate, pressing in close to fit atop the single step they're all crammed atop of.

He grunts once he's finally on his bottom, releases a sigh of relief, and Kate nudges his thigh with her knee.

"We're like a couple of old people, grunting and groaning just trying to sit down," she chuckles, earning the growl of Castle's throat at her shoulder.

"You're just always looking for an excuse to call me old."

"Wasn't singling you out. I feel just as elderly," Kate muses, listening to Alexis huff beside her.

"You guys were just shot and you're talking as if you're on your way to a nursing home."

"I better not be put in a nursing home," Castle protests, but Kate placates him with the pat of her hand to his knee.

"We'd never make a nursing home staff put up with you, baby."

"I realize that was a thinly veiled insult, but I'm going to take it as a compliment," he grins, catching her hand at his knee, threading their fingers and sealing their palms. "I know you'd never get rid of me."

"Mm, no. Happily stuck with you," Kate replies, Alexis's hum of assent still at her shoulder, and she could be content like this – sandwiched between two Castles with the blanket of green grass, the stretch of the dock leading out into the lapping waters of the lake, and the descent of the sun leaving the sky doused in streaks of pink and orange as her view. Even with the drumming beat of her wounds, still alive and thunderous in her ears, she wishes it could always be so easy.


	10. Chapter 10

Alexis and his mother leave not long after dinner despite how much he can tell neither of them want to go. But his daughter had enrolled in summer classes at Columbia to make up for the semesters she had taken off this past year, to take her mind off of her mourning, and his mother still had her acting school. He hadn't wanted them missing out on the few things that had kept them afloat over the past month, didn't want them making the drive back home in the dark either.

"Call at any time, day or night. Kate and I don't have new phones yet, but Jim says the landline is always working," Castle had reassured them both, hugging them as tightly as his brittle body would allow. "And maybe you can come back next weekend, start planning our Hamptons vacation."

"That sounds perfect, kiddo. I can't wait until you and Katherine are well enough to make the trip," his mother had gushed, cupping his face in her hands before she could leave the front porch for the Mercedes parked in the driveway. "My sweet boy," she had whispered, the smile on his mother's lips so adoring, so tender, it nearly brought tears to his eyes. "I am so glad you're alright, Richard."

"Me too, Mother," he'd smiled back, leaning in to press a kiss to her forehead before she had glanced to Kate and Alexis exchanging words and tentative smiles a couple of feet away, a careful embrace that seemed to hold meaning. He's not sure what conversation had been had on the back porch only hours earlier, before he could join them minutes prior to dinner being served, but whatever it had consisted of caused the ice that had glazed over his daughter's eyes to completely melt.

"You two look after each other," his mother had said, the lines carved deeper into the skin of her face softening as she'd divided her gaze between him and Kate.

"We will. You and Alexis do the same," Castle had murmured, squeezing his mother's frail shoulders and he hoped that his resurgence would change that, retract the fragile quality his mother had adopted, the lack of stability to her smile and the constant shine in her eyes. He hoped the vibrant effervescence that made Martha Rodgers who she is would soon return to take precedence once more.

He had watched his mother and daughter climb into the car, done his best to wave, plaster on an encouraging smile as they had finally driven away, waiting until the headlights had disappeared through the trees to turn his back to the driveway. Kate had laced her arms around his waist before he could go back inside, rested her cheek to his clavicle and allowed him to cling to her while he breathed through the tears that burned in the back of his throat.

"They'll be back," she had whispered, her palms warm and heavy, bracketing his tailbone and anchoring him to the spot with her, to how good and right she managed to make every moment feel.

After how wrong it had all been, he savored every second Kate Beckett infused with righteousness.

"We'll be back," she had added, knowing it wasn't over for them. They were still playing ghosts, not ready to return to the living.

Castle had pressed his lips to the top of her head, his nose in her hair. "I know."

He'd noticed the drag of her body once they eventually drifted back inside, locking the front door behind them, the subtle hunch of her shoulders, the stiff line of her spine as she had shuffled into the kitchen to hug her father, whisper her gratitude before she had wished him a goodnight.

"The doctor will be here tomorrow morning," Jim had informed him when Castle stepped forward to do the same. "I briefed him on Katie's most recent injuries and on her current symptoms, so he plans to run a few tests."

"She's going to kill us," Castle had murmured, joking, but also not. Because she really might kill at least one of them for planning an impromptu doctor's appointment behind her back like this.

But Castle and Jim had both agreed it would be best to wait until morning to fill Kate in; she was too exhausted for anything more today.

"Kate," he calls now, the alarm clock on the bedside table reading midnight. They've been in bed since nine o'clock. A couple of old people indeed, aged by the pierce of bullets and induced trauma.

"Hmm?"

He had known she was still awake beside him, the circle of her thumb at his pulse ceaseless, the shift of her body restless. She had even taken half of the pain pill like she had the night before, but apparently, she was so wound up, not even the strength of medication could put her at rest.

"You could barely stand when we walked in, dead on your feet, so why are you still awake?"

She sighs, so careful so not to upset her chest, and gingerly turns her head on the pillow, seeks out his expectant eyes in the moonlit darkness. And for a second, he's lost in that, how ethereal she looks drenched in moonlight, how breathtaking it is to have her beside her, in bed with him, again.

"Why are you?" she counters, soft despite the deflection, and that's okay, he can be honest about it.

"Scared to sleep for the most part. Scared to wake up, realize it was all a dream, that you're a dream," he confesses and her thumb goes still over his wrist. "Your turn."

Kate shudders out a breath, slips her hand into the embrace of his palm and closes her eyes. "I dream of you burning… in that incinerator Mason had. Of you bleeding out on the kitchen floor again. I dream that I'm awake in the hospital again and you're not there. Telling me you'll never be there."

His chest is tight, as if his ribs have been cemented together and their foundation is crumbling, crushing his lungs and bearing down too hard on his already dilapidated heart.

"This is so inconvenient. I want to hold you and I can't," he mumbles, watching Kate's lips spill into a tiny smile, broken and watery, but a smile that parts for the small huff of amusement she releases.

"Here," she murmurs, opening her eyes and bracing a hand between them, rolling slowly onto her side even as he releases a noise of protest. But it's too late, she's already lying on her left side, molding her body to fit along the edges of his.

"Okay?" he asks, curving his palm along the forearm she lays over the reconstructed bones of his ribcage, breathing heavy at his shoulder, but managing.

"Better."

"Much better," he agrees, sliding his other arm around her back, splaying his hand at the middle of her spine.

"Missed being able to feel you like this, Castle," she breathes out, the heat of her words skittering across his throat and Rick taps the knob of her vertebrae for it. She isn't _trying_ to torture him with the combination of her body so close and saying things like that, but she's still doing a fine job.

"And you claim you don't like snuggling," he grins, his lips at her crown and her fingers stealing beneath his shirt, her hand resting high on his abdomen, smothering the flame she elicited with the pinch of her fingers to his stomach.

"Try and sleep, Rick," she murmurs, her lips still curled upwards in the corners, her eyes falling closed once more, and the weight of her body so warm, reassuring, and right against his.

He finds that falling asleep isn't so hard after all, the drape of Kate Beckett at his side still the best way to ward off the nightmares.

* * *

Doctor Samuels arrives at eight the next morning and she's not happy about it. Kate had already been awake at his side, recovering from a recent trip to the bathroom, the amount of effort the task required, when the knock on the door had startled her. Jim had greeted the man, spoken his name loud enough to be heard from their room, and Kate had pursed her lips in frustration, turned her gaze on him.

"Did you have a part in this?" she questions, arching an eyebrow at him, and well, there had been no point in lying.

"Yes, I did," he admits, shifting up from the headboard to resist being crushed by the glare she pins on him. "I'm worried about you."

His wife squares her jaw, but she can't fight him on this, can't deny that she wouldn't do the same if he had been the one vomiting in the bathroom twice each day, upsetting the fragile state of his already damaged chest.

"Fine," she states, reaching over for his shirt, beginning to slip the buttons free.

Castle's brow furrows in confusion, but he doesn't try to stop her, whatever it is she's doing. "Uh, Kate, what are you doing?"

"If I have to get checked out, so do you," she quips, unable to quest higher than the middle of his plaid button down, exposing his abdomen to the cool air of the bedroom.

Rick maneuvers the last three buttons free from their fastenings. "Deal."

"Rick, Katie, Doctor Samuels is here," Jim announces from outside the door, knocking once before Kate calls back her acknowledgment and the door swings open to reveal her father and another man who looks to be about the same age as the older Beckett. Grey hair, kind brown eyes, an easy smile that could calm even the most anxious of patients, Doctor Samuel's is instantly likeable.

"Katie, good to see you again," Samuels greets, stepping inside the room. "And you must be Katie's husband, Rick? Jim told me a lot about you."

"Nice to meet you, Sir," Castle offers, his hand rising to shake out of reflex, but Samuels flicks his gaze to the exposed scar on Rick's chest, waves him off.

"You can call me Aaron, if you'd like. Now, Jim explained the majority of Katie's injuries to me over the phone, but I wasn't aware you suffered a gunshot wound as well?"

"Rick was shot at the same time I was," Kate fills in, the irritation in her eyes tucked away, her smile for the older man welcoming when he comes forward to stand beside their bed. "Essentially the same spot too-"

"His and hers," Castle chimes in without thinking, shooting her an apologetic look for the choked noise his joke jerks from her lips, but her doctor hides his smile and at least _someone_ can appreciate his gallows humor.

"Anyway," Kate mutters. "I was actually hoping you could take a look at his as well."

"Of course," Samuels assures them, placing the medical bag in his grasp atop the foot of the bed. "I can check you both out separately or together, however you prefer."

Castle casts a glance to Beckett, but he already knows what he wants and so does she.

"Together is fine," Kate murmurs, her knuckles grazing his calf before she eases her legs over the edge of the bed, moving out of the way, he realizes. "Castle can go first."

* * *

Rick receives a clean bill of health from Doctor Samuels and it sets the uneven bump and stumble of her heart at ease until it's her turn to undergo the simple checkup, allowing the older man she's been treated by since her teen years to examine both of her injuries, assess the damage. Doctor Samuels had patched her up multiple times throughout her youth, stitches on her knee when she had fallen from a tree, ointment for a poison oak rash on her arm, Tetanus shot when she'd cut her side on a rusty nail; he had seen her last gunshot wound, only a couple of weeks after her dad had driven her out here to recuperate, when her father's face had always been ashen with worry each and every time he looked at her.

She trusted the man with her wounds, with Castle's, but there was something she needed to bring up that she trusted no one with, not even herself. And to talk to Samuels about it had apprehension blooming hot and brutal through her gut, but he was the only medical professional they had immediate access to, and she had to know for sure.

"Well, Katie, despite how horrible I know it must feel, both of the wounds are healing quite nicely," Samuels had announced, peeling the gloves from his hands, dropping them into the waste basket nearby. "What has me concerned is the vomiting your dad mentioned."

Castle perks up from across the room, sitting in a rocking chair by the window with his shirt half buttoned once more, his hair gold and his eyes a piercing cerulean in the stream of sunlight flooding through the glass.

Beckett bites her lip, holding the edges of her shirt together, her arms still shaking from the gentle range of motion test Samuels had asked of her.

"I - Rick, do you mind waiting for me in the living room?" Castle shoots her a startled look, hurt seeping into his features when she requests a moment alone with the doctor and oh, she doesn't want to hurt him, but she doesn't want to get his hopes up either. "It's nothing serious, nothing I'm trying to hide, just - kind of embarrassing," she mumbles, holding his gaze, letting him search hers until he found the reassurance he was looking for.

"Okay," he agrees, using the wooden arms of the chair to lever himself up without strain, walking across the room to drop a kiss to her head. "I'll be right outside."

Kate nods, gives him a tightlipped smile as he steps away from the bed, shuffles out the door and into the hallway. She waits until she's certain her husband isn't loitering in the hallway, listening in outside the door, before finally returning her gaze to Samuels.

But the older man already has a knowing gleam in his warm brown eyes.

"From what I've been told and what I've seen here, I can't come up with too many reasons for why you would be so nauseous, especially when it's triggered by things that never affected you before," Samuels comments and Beckett sighs, curls her arm around her abdomen.

"Could - could a baby have survived everything I have?" she whispers, fighting the urge to close her eyes, shield herself from Samuels's reaction, but her childhood physician merely tilts his head, his expression thoughtful, but that conclusive look in his gaze hasn't disappeared.

"Well, your body underwent a lot of trauma, and obviously, the most threatening of your injuries to a fetus would be the gunshot wound you gained to your abdomen," he states, gesturing to the covered wound. " _But_ since the shot was rather high and if the fetus was only say… one to three weeks old? It could have very well been cushioned just fine within your womb and failed to suffer any effects of the bullet," Samuels explains, sitting back on the stool Jim had dragged in to place in front of the bed. "If pregnancy is the root of this, though, and the estimation of age is correct, I would want to at least put you on some vitamins so your baby is receiving as much nourishment as possible."

 _Your baby._ Oh god.

"I don't - I'm-" Kate closes her eyes for just a moment, inhales slowly through her nose, exhales through her mouth, waits until the riot of butterflies in her chest fall still. "I don't want Castle to know this is a possibility yet. Not if it's something else entirely. It would… it would be too much right now."

"I understand," Samuels nods, reaching to his side for the bag open on the floor, sifting through the contents before lifting a slim box between them. "And since I had my suspicions and I know you haven't been out and about, I brought this. Just in case."

Samuels places the pregnancy test in her lap.

"I'm aware that traveling is a severe hassle right now, but if that test reads positive, contacting your OBGYN as soon as you can would be a really good idea, Kate."

Beckett nods dumbly, staring down at the typical pregnancy test atop her knees, curling her fingers around the box and glancing towards the bathroom.

"And as for the nausea, all I can suggest is to listen to your body - take it easy, stay hydrated, and get plenty of rest," Samuels instructs, offering his hand to Kate as he rises from the stool, and she accepts, grits her teeth and breathes out in relief once she's standing. "And if you, Rick, or Jim need anything at all, do not hesitate to call me."

"Thank you, Doctor Samuels," she murmurs, feeling like a kid again for just a heartbeat of a moment before the doctor releases her hand, nudges her towards the bathroom.

"Anytime. I'll tell your husband and your dad that you'll be right out."

The man disappears with his medical bag before she can thank him again, and Kate does the same, eases the bathroom door shut before Castle can barge in and see the test. If it's negative, she'll explain it all, tell him it was just a ridiculous hunch that she felt silly sharing. And if it's positive…

Kate pops open the lid of the box, slides the slim plastic stick into her palm.

She'll think of what to say if it's positive while she waits for the results.

* * *

"Rick, stop pacing," Jim huffs from the doorway, waving to Samuels as he pulls out of the cabin's driveway and maneuvers his car through the cluster of trees back towards the main road.

The older man had said that Kate was fine, that she'd needed to use the bathroom, but it's been nearly ten minutes since Samuels had emerged from their bedroom, since he had told Rick goodbye and strolled out onto the porch with Jim for a brief chat before his departure.

What if she'd had to vomit again? What if she passed out? What if she-

"Castle."

The call of his name is soft, muffled behind the partially closed door, and Rick jerks forward down the hall, winces and listens to Jim's gentle reproach, forces himself to slow. Her voice was calm, relaxed, not urgent, not in pain. She's okay, he reminds himself, repeats it in his head like a mantra, _she's okay she's okay she's okay._

Castle steps inside the bedroom to find his wife in the bathroom doorway, propped up by the polished wood frame, waiting for him with her lips drawn up in a half smile.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, fine," he murmurs, shuffling deeper into the room to meet her in the entrance to the adjoining one. "Are you?"

Kate's eyes flicker from his, her chest rising with a careful breath below the shirt hanging on her body. Not the most reassuring response.

One of her hands flutters between them once he's close enough, her fingers hooking in his belt loop, not even having to tug to have him drifting as close as he possibly can. The concern in his chest is hot, a bubbling cauldron in his stomach, sending up heat to sear his sternum. She hadn't kicked him out earlier to hide something from him, that's what she'd said, but there had been a reason, one she wasn't telling him, and he had a feeling that whatever it was had to do with the expression of hesitance claiming her face now.

"Kate?"

Her other hand seeks his, her pinky hooking in two of his fingers, transferring a stick of plastic into his palm. Castle glances down in bewilderment – where had that even come from? – before realization registers, surprise and shock like ice water through his system, putting out the scalding worry and sending a hiss of steam washing through his torso.

"What - this - are you?" He chokes on his own questions, lifts the pregnancy test up to answer them before she can.

Positive.

"When I started getting sick, I had a feeling… but I thought it would be impossible," she whispers, her voice even but quiet, raspy. " _I_ barely made it, so I couldn't fathom a baby surviving. But Doctor Samuels brought the test just in case and I - I just wanted to be sure before I told you."

He tears his eyes from the tiny digital screen, the two distinct lines, up to the woman inches away from him, biting her lip and dividing her gaze between his and the test in his hand. "You wanted to ask - that's why you wanted me to wait. To be sure."

"Yes," she murmurs, her fingers climbing from his pants to snag in the side of his shirt. "I didn't want to get our hopes up-"

"Hopes?" he gasps out. "You had hopes?"

The pearls of her teeth peek out from between the petals of her lips, tentative but blossoming wider with her smile. "The timing may not necessarily be the best, but while I was waiting for the results of that test, I realized I would have been more disappointed by a negative sign. I want - I want this, with you. I want you both so much."

"Oh, Kate." He has to lean down, smudge his smile to hers even though it causes him to ache. But she's so happy, brimming with joy that spills onto his tongue when she kisses him back, and it's too good, too good for him to even acknowledge the pain. "Love you. I love you so much."

Kate steals the test from his fingers, tucks it into his back pocket so she can claim his fingers, press his knuckles to the soft flesh of her stomach.

"I love you too," she chuckles, their teeth bumping when her smile stretches to match his.

"How long?" he finally remembers to ask, his body still hunched over hers, his thumb tracing the circle of her belly button.

"Samuels estimated six week to eight weeks," she reveals and Rick's heart stutters as he does the math, stands up straighter with the understanding.

"Six weeks?" Castle breathes, shock and awe and everything in between swirling through his chest. "That means you were - even when we were shot, it-"

"Made it," Kate confirms on a whisper, their fingers still curled at her stomach. "Even after the gunshot wounds and the trauma and the last month of hell, our baby made it, Castle."

"Our baby," he echoes, breathless with it. "We - we're going to have a baby. A little badass survivor baby."

Kate chokes on her laughter, but manages a nod of her head that brushes her nose to his. "Apparently so."

"Do you want… we can disappear, if you want to," Castle begins, blurts, eliciting the stitching of Kate's brow in gentle confusion, the tilt of her head. "I mean - no one knows we're alive yet and once they do, it's going to be hard for a little while, harder once the news of your pregnancy gets out, and I just want you to know that if you didn't want to go back, we don't have to."

The sparks of gold like joy in her eyes fail to dim, but her smile wavers at the offer, the suggestion.

"I can write from anywhere in the world," he pushes on, because she has to know, has to have all the options laid out in front of her. "We could book a flight to Paris, I know a guy who makes a living on creating fake IDs-"

"Rick," she chuckles, her hand rising between them, the tip of her index finger touching his chin, her nail grazing his bottom lip, unable to reach any higher. "Disappearing to another country, starting over with new lives, that might be safer, smarter. But that's not us," his wife murmurs, her fingers trickling down his throat, her thumb hooking in the hollow of his collarbones' convergence. "I like our life together, our story. And I want to be us, keep being us. Want our baby to know the truth."

"Oh, she'll love our story," he breathes out, returning his forehead to hers, but Kate's brow is hitching against his skin.

"She? You… you think it's a girl?" she whispers, gnawing on her bottom lip, as if she's trying to contain her jubilance from overwhelming them both.

"I - yes? Maybe. Just a theory."

"Mm, funny. I thought it might just be mother's intuition," she muses and he can barely swallow past the sheer happiness clogging his throat where her fingers rest, blanketing his chest, can barely manage to choke out his laughter.

"Connection?"

Kate grins, tilting her chin upwards to dust her mouth to his bottom lip. "Always."


	11. Chapter 11

**Epilogue**

* * *

The room was too bright. His eyes screw shut, can't handle the light.

The pain in his chest spikes, spreads like a brutal shock through his sternum, electrocuting his bones, his muscles seizing and his blood running dry. Choking him, he can't breathe past it.

On her knees, he can hear the caps of bone crack against the hardwood, the thud of her body hitting the floor. The smell of copper in the air, propane, a gunshot ringing through his ears.

Dying. Kate's dying. Bleeding out beside him, her fingers cold in his grasp, her eyes black and unseeing.

"Castle."

He's always too late.

" _Castle_."

The silence of his dying wife is broken by the insistent call of his name, ripping him from a dream that was once their reality, reeling him back to the surface where she hovers above him, her hands cradling his face and wiping at the tears.

"Open your eyes for me, Castle." He tears from the grips of the nightmare to see her face inches from his, the worry in her eyes illuminated by sunlight that is still gentle with only the beginnings of daybreak.

Alive. Still alive.

"Kate," he chokes, ragged with it and lifting clumsy hands to her bowed spine, fisting his trembling fingers in the t-shirt draped over her back until he can breathe through the tears in his throat.

"You're okay, it's okay, Castle," Kate whispers, her fingers feathering at his cheeks, drifting down to his chest. Her body is curved above his, her knees bracketing his hips, holding him down. "Hey, love, you with me?" she breathes, stealing an endearment he saves for her alone, touching her lips to the damp skin beneath his eye as he shakes out a nod of his head.

His chest is still heaving, violent shudders that repress the sobs in his throat before they can surge free, but the weight of his wife anchors him, drags him back into reality.

Kate had lived, is living, breathing above him.

Her lashes dust his cheek, butterfly kisses that infuse him with a sense of calm, remind him to gulp down the air he needs.

"Same dream?"

"Yeah," he rasps, remembering to loosen his hold on her shirt, flatten his palms at the backs of her ribs and migrate upwards to cradle the drawn in wings of her shoulder blades. "Lost you."

"No," she murmurs, her lips brushing the bridge of his nose, traveling higher to press between his brows. "Never. I'm right here, Rick. Promise."

He lets her words console him, convince him of the truth, and quiet the restless fear that he would wake up one day back in the cabin, alone and overwhelmed with grief, that he'd be widowed and without her, that she'll really be gone.

Rick's eyes flutter shut for a long moment, the scent of her shampoo encompassing him, washing out the smell of blood, her fingers stroking at his ears coaxing his breathing into an easy rhythm that matches the rise and fall of the waves he can hear outside their bedroom windows.

They both know why his nightmares had returned with such ferocity over the last few weeks, why hers sometimes drew her from their bed in the middle of the night, into the adjoining bathroom until he woke alone to find her curled against the Jacuzzi tub with silent tears staining her skin. Coming to the Hamptons after two months of recovery at Jim Beckett's cabin had been a good plan, a healthy plan, but before they had journeyed from the woods to the beach, they had taken a detour to the loft.

The trauma he had felt upon entering his own home had shaken him, shaken them both, and bile had risen in his throat at the sight of the kitchen. Alexis had been staying in the loft throughout the entirety of their time away, his mother too, both of them going so far as to remodel portions of the kitchen – replacing the bloodstained floorboards, the cabinets Caleb Brown had collapsed against, even the stove – eradicating any blatant triggers of the event.

Castle had still flinched at the sight of the room.

"We'll redecorate when we move back," Kate had whispered, her hand squeezing hard within his, tugging him along to their bedroom. They had only stopped by to pack, to load their suitcases with summer clothes and pieces of home they had been without. "We'll make it home again."

It had been three weeks; he still didn't know if he wanted to go back.

"Sorry I woke you," he finally manages, opening his eyes as Kate lifts her head, the waves of her hair a riot of gold falling around her face, tickling his jaw. "Both of you."

Beckett shakes her head. "Didn't wake me. Noticed you getting restless when I woke up to use the bathroom. Definitely didn't wake her."

A smile twitches at the corner of his mouth as she eases onto her side, her body still half draped atop him, and Castle brushes his knuckles along the swell of her stomach. Their baby had just started moving around for the first time a few days ago, and Kate had quickly learned that their daughter enjoyed the activity, most consistently throughout the night.

Their daughter. Still not confirmed, still just a theory, but one he believed would be proven true.

Castle shifts to face her, hand rising to comb through her hair, tangle in the locks. They had been in the Hamptons for nearly a month and already, Kate's skin had that sun kissed glow she so easily acquired, streaks of gold highlighting her hair, freckles peppering her flesh. And she just looked so healthy, he could almost forget about the puckered flesh just below her collarbone, the matching scar still high on her abdomen, overshadowed by the development of her pregnancy.

"Wanna go for a walk on the beach?"

Rick arches an eyebrow at her for the suggestion, but she's grinning back at him.

"It's six in the morning," he points out, but Kate merely shrugs in response.

"I crave the crisp, morning air," she murmurs, already sliding from beneath his touch, maneuvering to the edge of the mattress and swinging her legs over the side.

He watches her for a moment, her palm curved over her belly as she crosses the room to enter the closet, instinctual and protective. It strikes a match of heat through his veins, the fierce but tender side to her he's seen emerge and overcome, the woman already prepared to fight for her child. Their child.

Pregnancy had accentuated Kate's strength, her passion, and it still strikes him sometimes, bathes him in awe, that he's going to have a baby with her.

"Castle, come on," she calls, stepping out of the closet still in his t-shirt, but with the addition of the boyfriend jeans she often favored these days, the waistband elastic and the legs of the pants rolled up to her ankles, her preference for strolling through the sand.

Rick rises from the bed, catching her hip before he can stroll past her to snag a pair of his own pants, another t-shirt, to lean in, dust a kiss to her mouth. But Kate curls her fingers at his elbows, arches on her toes and laces her arms around his neck with a smile blooming on her lips, still so proud that she can move with freedom again, no longer restricted by the limits of two bullet wounds.

She kisses him softly, thoroughly, leaves him breathless and trembling by the time she descends back to her feet.

"I love you," he gets out.

"I know," she whispers, her hands skimming his sides, steadying him. It had always been the other way around throughout their recovery, Castle healing quicker, offering her the balance of his hands, the support of his body when she needed it. Now, they were even again. "I love you too. Now, put some pants on."

* * *

They walk barefoot through the sand, still cool with the remnants of the night, moonlight and stardust still embedded within the grains, and Kate relishes in the sensation of it beneath her feet. The sunlight has barely crested the horizon, the waking rays of light brightening the word around them, abolishing the darkness that had claimed her husband's eyes, infiltrated the lines of his face.

The nightmares were becoming less frequent, for both of them, but it still cracked her open, wide and raw, to witness him strangled with imaginary grief, choking on memories that still haunt them both.

"It was worth it."

Kate tears her eyes from the ripple of the nearby ocean, their linked fingers, connected arms, stretching when she slows beside him at the water's edge, stares up at him in question.

"How we got here. It was difficult sometimes, painful, but even now… I still wouldn't change it," Castle states, his lips curled upwards, tender and fond, reminiscent.

She squeezes his hand, lists into his side as they continue onwards. "Me neither. I would have before, would have skipped over certain parts, chapters, but not anymore. Like you said, that time at prom-"

He releases a soft huff of laughter at the memory, nearly three years old, but apparently still fresh enough for him to recall with ease.

"Everything we've done, every choice we've made, every terrible, wonderful thing that has ever happened to us," she muses, echoes. "It's all led us right here, to this moment. And I would never compromise that, trade this, for anything."

Rick sways sideways to smear a kiss to her temple, but Kate stops them altogether.

"What?" he murmurs, all traces of the midnight horror gone from the pools of his irises, the brilliant shade of cerulean shining back at her instead, joy spilling into every contour and crevice of his features, and it fills her up, steals her breath that she did this, made him happy.

Kate shakes her head, stares up at him in the sunlight.

"Nothing, I'm just… grateful. Grateful that we made it."

Lily, a name that had been a reoccurring theme in her mind, an option she had yet to share with him that just kept popping up every time the baby moved, shifted, like she was wiggling just below the surface of Kate's skin.

"Hey, calm down in there," she chuckles, directing her gaze to the small bump of her stomach between them, rubbing her palm to the spot the baby was nudging against.

Castle's gaze follows, his hand too, slipping beneath his stolen t-shirt to splay over her bare skin.

"She's feisty," he grins, but the activity calms at the warm weight of his hand. She's not even surprised, doesn't blame the kid – Castle's touch does a fine job of calming her too.

"And she's only just started. The next few months are going to be fun," Kate sighs, her smile wry, but Castle's eyes only sparkle brighter.

"You be good in there, sweet girl," he murmurs, his thumb circling along her skin, soothing their daughter back into stillness.

"Lily," Kate whispers, lifting her eyes to him, watching his expression change through the fringe of her lashes. "Sometimes I - I've been calling her Lily."

"Lily," he echoes, a beautiful combination of blues and gold rippling through his gaze like the sunlight shimmering across the water at their backs. "Lily Castle. That's actually… I love that. But why Lily?"

She shrugs beneath the intensity of his curiosity, the yearning to know. "You always brought me lilies, before we were even together, and the bouquet you had delivered last week… it just made the name pop into my head, been stuck there ever since."

"Did we just pick a name for our baby?" he whispers, that lopsided, little boy smile claiming his lips before she can.

"I think so," Kate grins, canting forward at the drape of Castle's hands to her waist, a burst of giddiness spreading through her chest, trickling through her bloodstream.

"Do you think… Lily Johanna, would you like that? Is it too-"

His smile has faded, the look on his face so earnest, thoughtful, as if he's been contemplating the idea for quite a while now, and her repaired heart skips a beat or two. He's just… such a good husband, an extraordinary man. And she loves him, so deep and devastating, tragic and beautiful, endless.

"No, it's perfect," she whispers, cupping his cheeks in her hands and drawing his mouth down to hers for a kiss, chaste but reverent, letting him taste how she loved him in the soft caress of her tongue, feel the way he made her come alive with joy, made her feel extraordinary.

Castle was right. Unquestionably right.

It was worth it.


End file.
